WEDA Advocacy Action Alert 

ACT TODAY: Urge Your State Lawmakers to Support Talent Attraction Funding 

One of the biggest challenges facing Wisconsin businesses is the state’s severe workforce shortage and their inability to find enough workers to fill open jobs. The shortage has impacted every industry, including manufacturing, health care, and hospitality, and threatens Wisconsin’s economic growth.

There are several complex factors behind Wisconsin’s worker shortage, but one significant reason is the state’s demographics trends, which are shifting toward an older population, the loss of younger workers to migration, and the lack of new people moving to Wisconsin. As a result, Wisconsin has more jobs than we have people to fill those jobs.

While the growing crisis cannot be fixed overnight and will require both short-term and long-term solutions to fill Wisconsin’s talent pipeline, policymakers and businesses alike must act now to start growing our labor force. One simple thing that can be done relatively quickly is to revive the state’s comprehensive marketing campaign to encourage out-of-state workers to move to Wisconsin for career opportunities and a better quality of life.

Unfortunately, the state’s talent attraction initiative that effectively marketed Wisconsin as a great place to live and work throughout the Midwest and across the country has exhausted its funding. With the Wisconsin Legislature currently debating and reshaping the proposed 2021-23 state budget bill, it’s critical to reach out to state lawmakers and urge them to provide funding for this important program to help strengthen Wisconsin’s workforce and continue to grow our economy.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:

E-mail your state legislators TODAY and urge them to support talent attraction funding as part of the 2021-23 state budget bill. The Legislature’s budget-writing committee could potentially consider the issue as early as next week.  Please use WEDA’s sample e-mail when contacting your lawmakers. All you need to do is cut-and-paste it into an e-mail, but please consider personalizing your e-mail to include examples of how the worker shortage is impacting businesses in your community.

If you don’t know who your state legislators are, or do not have their contact information, simply CLICK HERE and type your home address in the upper right corner text box. Remember to contact both your state senator and state representative.

If you have any questions on this WEDA Advocacy Action Alert request or would like additional information on the issue, please contact the WEDA Government Affairs Team at mwelsh@weda.org.