Data and anecdotal evidence show a growing problem with work ethic
Despite low unemployment and indications of a recharging economy, business leaders and educators are concerned about the future of the workforce in the Badger State — and are debating whether many young Wisconsinites are just lazy.
In 2000, roughly 66.5 percent of people aged 16 to 19 were in the Wisconsin workforce. By 2022, that figure stood at 56.5 percent, according to a University of Wisconsin Extension study. The number of people that age in the workforce and in school dropped from 31 percent in 1998 to 17.6 percent by 2020, the study said.
In the 2022-23 school year, just 5.7 percent of all juniors and seniors in Wisconsin high schools were enrolled in youth apprenticeship programs, according to the most recent data from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.
The UW Extension in June reported the gross domestic productivity, or the total value of goods and services produced by each Wisconsin worker, is consistently behind that of every one of its Midwestern neighbors. That productivity dropped steadily between 2020 and 2023.
Kurt Bauer, president and CEO of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s chamber of commerce, is the rare business leader willing to say what many business owners will only disclose in anonymous surveys: Wisconsin doesn’t work as hard as it used to and younger workers are the reason.
“It might be generational, but we now have a worker shortage in that younger demographic,” Bauer told the Badger Institute. “The deterioration of the family may have something to do with it. We have a lot of young people who haven’t been told how important it is to have a job.
In many cases, Bauer has been pilloried by progressive political leaders and labor union officials for suggesting it. The data and the anecdotal evidence suggest Bauer has nothing to apologize for.
Surveys done biannually by the WMC provide a perspective of businesses adjusting to a new economic climate coming out of COVID, to sweeping tariffs, and to a reassessment of an education system struggling with artificial intelligence and the demand for skilled tradespeople.
The need for workers is real. In the January WMC survey, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they were having a hard time finding qualified workers.
By June such responses dropped to a decade-low 52 percent but only, Bauer said, because “many businesses are delaying decisions and investments, including hiring.”
A declining work ethic is a complaint in nearly every business survey done in Wisconsin. The pandemic response might have supercharged what Bauer sees as a shift away from parents stressing the value of hard work.
Through February, Wisconsin averaged 93,099 more job openings every month than the number of people looking for work since January 2021, the latest Extension report said.
Wisconsin workers, according to data gatherers at WalletHub, are the 25th hardest working crew in all the 50 states, right smack dab in the middle.
An analysis of the last five WalletHub Hardest Working surveys shows that Wisconsin rebounded to 25 in 2025 after dropping in four consecutive years from 23 to 33.
In those five years, the state lagged behind Iowa, which ranked no lower than 22 and as high as 12, and Minnesota, which ranked as high as 16 and no lower than 23.
Illinois and Michigan, with their prolonged economic and labor problems, ranked no higher than 40, and in this last survey Michigan was dead last.
Bauer raised the issue of work ethic as far back as 2011.
“Factories in many parts of the state have jobs available for qualified workers, but many employers complain applicants … (among other things) don’t have the old-fashioned Midwestern work ethic our state is known for,” Bauer said in a press release at the time.
In 2017, 65 percent of business leaders responding to the WMC survey said the work ethic in Wisconsin had dropped over the past 20 years, with 16 percent saying it had “strongly declined.”
And in 2021, the second year of COVID recovery, Bauer sent a letter to Gov. Tony Evers criticizing his administration for piling on unnecessary federal and state benefits to allow “able-bodied workers to remain on the sidelines while thousands of jobs are available today.”
Bauer said he thinks President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill removing many of the incentives not to work will be a spur.
“There are plenty of jobs in this economy, and now you’ve taken away the reasons for someone not to get up off the couch,” he said.
Employers aren’t only chronically short of workers, their top concern is now “availability of workers with appropriate skill sets,” according to a new business climate survey by Workforce Development.
“The survey makes one point crystal clear: Talent remains the greatest economic constraint in Wisconsin,” Lindsay Blumer, CEO of WRTP / Big Step, a non-profit pre-apprenticeship training program in Milwaukee, wrote of the survey on her LinkedIn page.
“Employers are not only looking for technical ability. Soft skills, reliability, and the ability to problem-solve remain top gaps identified in the survey,” she wrote. “That should serve as a wake-up call for how we prepare people for work.”
Workforce Development survey authors and Blumer did not respond to a Badger Institute request for the survey, which is not available online.
Wisconsin isn’t likely any time soon to correct its imbalance between the number of jobs created and the number of people qualified for those jobs, said Steven Deller, one of the authors of the UW Extension study.
That study offers no prescription for the imbalance, but Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison, said the state’s workforce, particularly in tourism, took a heavy hit during the pandemic. The recovery still isn’t complete.
Nor has worker productivity fully recovered from the retreat of heavy manufacturing two generations ago. Deller wasn’t surprised that Wisconsin workers got a middling grade from WalletHub.
“But do I believe,” said Deller, that the idea “there are a whole lot of workers in Wisconsin just sitting on the sideline not working, that’s just not true.”
“Wisconsin people like to work.”
Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.
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