(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin unemployment rate remained 3.1% in August, below the 4.3% national rate.
But the labor force participation rate dropped to 64.8% in August while the national rate is 62.3%.
The total labor force in the state was down 7,100 for the month and 36,900 for the year.
“The Wisconsin labor market has cooled a bit along with the national economy but unemployment rates do remain historically low,” said Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Section Chief of the Office of Economic Advisors Scott Hodek.
The number of people employed in Wisconsin was down 6,000 for the month and 40,400 over the year.
Hodek said that Wisconsin is seeing a peak point where workers are aging out of the labor force and there are not as many workers in the state ready to replace them.
It’s an overall population issue that has estimates that the state population peaked at 5.96 million, will be at an estimated 5.89 million by 2030 and 5.84 million by 2040.
“The underlying labor challenge is demographic,” Hodek said. “it’s that Baby Boomers are aging out of the labor force. That’s kind of underpinning most of the changes overall with the economy and most of the things we are dealing with.”

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly said the state’s schools are underfunded and the state needs to step up during her annual State of Education Speech on Thursday in Madison.
She also called the federal government the “biggest schoolyard bully” that Wisconsin schools face.
Critics, however, say that the way Wisconsin schools spend money is a large problem with the state’s education system.
“Dr. Underly complains that funding is ‘inadequate,’ but the average school district in Wisconsin now has nearly $18,000 in revenue per student,” Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty Policy Director Will Flanders wrote in response. “A class of 20 students represents $360,000 in taxpayer value. Money is not what is holding our schools back.”
The Institute for Reforming Government wrote its own State of Education on Thursday, saying the state received record budget increases for the second straight budget but test scores have not improved.
The state’s public schools have a record amount of staff as the state’s schools are now facing decreasing enrollment but public schools have a lack of classroom teachers in specialized areas.
“The real state of education in Wisconsin is that the education bureaucracy keeps blocking progress, and it’s students and taxpayers who are paying the price,” Quinton Klabon, Senior Research Director at the Institute for Reforming Government, said in the group’s Real State of Education. “After consecutive years of record-breaking investment, parents, and taxpayers deserve results, not excuses.”
Underly went on to say that state legislative leaders are starving public schools to benefit private schools by pulling resources from public schools.
“Decades of insufficient investment have forced a historic number of districts into an impossible situation,” Underly said. “Turning to referenda, year after year, just to survive. All while facing micromanaging from Madison and endless finger-pointing from lawmakers who too often choose politics over partnership.”
Flanders, however, showed that inflation-adjusted spending for public schools in Wisconsin has nearly doubled since the 1970s.
Underly closed by issuing a challenge to give more funding to public schools and see better results.
“This is our wake-up call,” Underly said. “This is the mirror we must face. And we have to ask ourselves: Is this who we want to be? Will we be the generation that looked away as our schools crumbled? Or will we be the ones who stood up, kept our promise, and chose to write a different story?”

(The Center Square) – There’s now a lawsuit over the nearly 200 absentee ballots that election managers in Madison didn’t count last fall.
The law firm Law Forward filed a class action suit on behalf of eight voters in Dane County.
“The right to vote is fundamental in the State of Wisconsin and ‘may not under our Constitution and laws be destroyed or even unreasonably restricted. No matter how the franchise is exercised, the Wisconsin Constitution’s guarantee remains constant: the right to vote is ‘a sacred right of the highest character.'” Law Forward wrote in its court filing. “Nevertheless, despite the hallowed protections in our state constitution, [the city of Madison] irrevocably deprived each Plaintiff, and every member of the putative class, of their right to vote in the November 2024 general election.”
In all, Madison’s former clerk and her staff didn’t count 193 absentee ballots cast during the November 2024 election.
An investigation by the Wisconsin Elections Commission discovered that the clerk’s office found some of the ballots about a week after Election Day but did nothing. A second batch of ballots were found about a month after Election Day, but then-Clerk Marybeth Wetzel-Behl still did nothing to count the ballots or alert state election managers.
“In late-December 2024, the City of Madison publicly announced that ‘a number of absentee ballots from the November 5, 2024 general election were not properly processed.’ The week after this announcement, the City mailed a letter to each named Plaintiff and each remaining member of the putative class. 84. The letter acknowledged that each Plaintiff’s votes, like the votes of all putative class members, should have been counted and that the failure to count the votes was the City’s fault and/or the fault of the City Defendants,” Law Forward added.
The lawsuit also noted that the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that Madison’s clerk and her election office “disenfranchised” the 193 voters who didn’t have their ballots counted. And the WEC investigation added that Witzel-Behl likely broke state law, though Elections commissioners did not ask for formal charges in the case.
Law Forward is asking for money in the case “to remedy harm, suffering, the deprivation of the right to vote, and punitive damages.” But the lawsuit does not set a specific price.

(The Center Square) – Microsoft announced Thursday it intends to build a $4 billion data center in Racine County in addition to the more than $3 billion data center it is currently building in Mount Pleasant, which is expected to be completed in early 2026.
The second data center is expected to be completed by 2028.
Data centers are becoming increasingly necessary as cloud-based memory and computing capabilities increase but tax incentives for those centers are questioned due to the lack of long-term jobs at the sites, the energy needs and the potential increase in consumer energy bills that accompany those data centers.
The new announcement would mean that six large data center projects are in the works in the state with Vantage Data Center in Port Washington set to be the largest energy user in Wisconsin history with Vantage asking for 1.3 gigawatts of energy to be available by 2027 and ultimately 3.5 gigawatts of power.
Wisconsin exempted sales tax on materials used to build the data centers and the electricity used at the data centers in the last budget cycle and have passed legislation to provide tax increment financing exceptions for several of the current slate of data centers in order to allow those companies to retain any property taxes from the increased value of the property after the data center is built.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ office said that construction of the Mount Pleasant data center has included as many as 3,000 construction workers during peak operations.
“But what does that mean for the average Wisconsinite? It means new jobs, new skills, and new opportunities — right here at home,” Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith wrote. “From union construction roles to long-term careers in operations and IT, this facility is creating pathways for Wisconsinites to be part of the future of technology.
“It means students at Gateway Technical College can train for high-demand roles through Wisconsin’s first Datacenter Academy. It means local companies — from manufacturers to startups — can partner with Microsoft engineers to turn AI ideas into real solutions.”
That demand for power for these data centers is leading to both a push for new and reliable energy sources for the future – including a nuclear siting plan – and projections that the average American’s energy bill could increase from 25% to 70% in the next 10 years without intervention from policymakers, according to Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Jack Kemp Foundation.
Voters across the U.S. have said they don’t want data centers built in their community and even more oppose the data centers if tax incentives are awarded to have them built, according to a recent poll by Libertas Network.
A least 10 states are currently losing $100 million or more in taxes from data centers, according to an April report from Good Jobs First.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s math scores have fallen and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is pushing for state and local leaders to enact numeracy reform to address the issue in the same way that states enacted post-pandemic literacy reforms.
The group said that seven states have already enacted numeracy legislation to increase access, accountability and resources for math learning to ensure students who are struggling with math concepts are identified and given the help needed promptly in order to learn the concepts.
Wisconsin students ranked second in the country in eighth grade math scores on the 2024 National Assessment for Educational Progress test and fifth on the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment, but those results have been heading in the wrong direction in what is a nationwide trend.
“We’ve seen states all over the country tackle literacy as a huge issue and there’s been a huge drive to tackle literacy, for good reason,” WILL Policy Director Kyle Koenen told The Center Square. “But the same applies to math. Since the COVID pandemic, Wisconsin and states around the nation have experienced a decline in math proficiency and that has long term lasting impacts.”
Republican Assembly leadership said that numeracy reform would be coming at a recent news conference announcing the group’s plans for education reforms, including school consolidation legislation with the state’s declining birth rate.
WILL’s model policy on numeracy includes monitoring students’ early knowledge closely, having multi-tiered support for intervention when students struggle, notifying parents when students fall behind, providing additional instruction and providing training for teachers.
“Students that perform well in math are more likely to have success later in life, in their career,” Koenen said. “With Wisconsin, we have a labor shortage, so we need students who are ready to enter the workforce and function well and math is a huge part of that.”
Wisconsin math scores showed that the average student is 1/3 of a grade level behind pre-pandemic levels, 83% of students are attending schools with scores behind 2019 benchmarks and PISA math scores were more than 12 points since 2018.
The Nation’s Report Card was recently released and just 22% of 12th graders in the U.S. are proficient in math, a low point.
“While Wisconsin typically performs well amongst its peers on the Nation’s Report Card in fourth or eighth grade math, as a whole the nation is kind of falling further behind in comparison to a lot of our global peers and we’re in a global market for talent,” Koenen said.

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin bill would create an exemption to employment law that would make Minor League Baseball players in the state salaried workers and not eligible for overtime pay.
The exemption would only apply to the about 60 players for Wisconsin’s two Major League Baseball affiliates, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers in Appleton and the Beloit Sky Carp.
The bill does not apply to independent league teams or other baseball teams in the state.
Similar bills have been passed in both red and blue states, sponsor Rep. Alex Dallman, R-Markesan, told the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development.
He noted that Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana and New York had already passed similar bills.
Senate Bill 374 is supported by both Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, according to Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac.
Minor League Baseball players are part of a 2023 collective bargaining contract that runs through 2027.
That first CBA included increased benefits for players, including team-paid health benefits, pay increases and an increased housing allowance, according to Feyen. Players are now paid weekly throughout the year, not just during the season.
If the bill did not pass, teams would have to track all work-related activities for players and count rehab, any training and time spent at the ballpark or with the team toward overtime requirements.
“Being a professional baseball player is a unique job, to say the least,” Feyen said.
The Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball lobbied for the bill in Wisconsin, recording $46,000 in expenses between January and June in that effort, according to information posted by the Wisconsin Ethics Commission.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s Democratic race for governor continues to grow after Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, jumped into the race Wednesday.
“In 2020, I made history as the first Asian American elected to the Wisconsin State Legislature,” Hong wrote in a campaign announcement on X. “Since then, I’ve fought like hell for working families – and now, I’m ready to take that fight to the next level.”
Hong represents Madison’s isthmus and is a member of both the Democratic Socialists of America and the Wisconsin Assembly’s Socialist Caucus. She is often considered one of Wisconsin’s most progressive lawmakers.
“We don’t have the billionaire class behind us,” Hong added on X. “We have something stronger: people who believe Wisconsin should work for all of us – not just the wealthy few.”
Hong is a chef and bartender and owned a restaurant in Madison until it closed during COVID. She is making her work history a large part of her campaign kickoff.
“I’m the daughter of immigrants,” she wrote. “I built my career in the service industry – as a chef, a small business owner, and a community organizer. I know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. To scramble for child care. To lose sleep because of bills piling up.”
Hong is just the latest Democrat to jump into the race, including the second this week.
She now joins Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley as the major candidates in the race.
They are all running to see who will replace Gov. Tony Evers as the Democratic candidate next year.
There are two official Republican candidates. Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann and businessman Bill Berrien are the only GOOP candidates so far.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin scored a 53, ahead of just 15 other states, in a new report on election security.
The Meyers Report rated state election processes based on 17 risk areas, giving an ultimate score between 0 and 100 with 100 being the most secure. Mississippi had the highest score at 83 while Nevada was the lowest at 30.
Wisconsin lost points due to 193 uncounted absentee ballots from the November 2024 election found in Madison due, after which an investigation from the Wisconsin Elections Commission investigation has found former Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl broke the law by leaving those ballots uncounted.
MacIver Institute CEO Annette Olson told The Center Square that a large concern out of the uncounted ballots is that the people of Madison have confidence that their ballots will be counted and handled properly in the future.
“We really want to make sure that people have confidence in the elections,” Olson said.
Olson is part of the Election Integrity Network, which has members from 26 states who meet regularly to discuss election integrity issues, determining if perceived issues are actual problems and ensuring that states and local officials are following election law and have been properly trained.
The group has both short-term and long-term goals on legislation to ensure the public has confidence in elections including the proper handling of absentee ballots and ensuring that American citizens are the only people voting in elections with stricter voter identification laws.
“How do we make sure that when people vote absentee, they know that every ballot is handled with integrity, transparency and the property chain of custody?” Olson said the group asks.
The Meyers Report pointed to the Carter-Baker Commission, which said that mail-in ballots and lack of voter identification were the two greatest risks in the American election system.
The U.S. Department of Justice has asked that state voter rolls be available for free, with 75% of the other nations used in the Meyers Report fulfilling that obligation. But Wisconsin was included as one of the eight states that do not comply with the DOJ request, along with Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York and Pennsylvania.
The report also pointed to lax oversight of absentee voting and voter registration as potential isses while citing a 2021 Legislative Audit Bureau report showing the WEC violated state election law.
The report encourages states to maintain a consistent chain of custody on ballots, ensure only citizens vote while requiring government photo identification. It also recommended voters have privacy to vote without intimidation, results should be timely confirmed through recounts and audits and voters should have access to voter rolls.

(The Center Square) – Calls for repercussions and firings of those who celebrated or mocked the killing of Charlie Kirk have occurred across the country over the past week.
Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-3rd Congressional, would like to prevent federal funding from going to entities that employ individuals who did exactly that. But a First Amendment free speech group believes the proposal is a clear violation of the First Amendment, much like a threat from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to send law enforcement after individuals who participate in hate speech related to Kirk.
Van Orden has proposed a bill that would prohibit federal funding for “entities that employ individuals who condone and celebrate political violence and domestic terrorism, and for other purposes.”
“Political violence and politically violent rhetoric have no place in the United States,” Van Orden said in a statement. “Those celebrating or condoning the death of American citizens will not receive federal dollars, period. The time of funding hate is over. These radical individuals will be held accountable.”
The Center Square was unable to get further comment on the bill from Van Orden, but he has posted about the topic several times on X.com, saying that he would “remove all federal funding, including grants and community directed projects for the entire city of Ellsworth unless this is rectified immediately” for the community based after comments from a teacher reportedly from Ellsworth Community School District.
“The government can choose which programs to fund if there is some sort of program for supporting domestic terrorism or condoning violence or prevent funding for that,” said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Legislative and Policy Director Carolyn Iodice. “But they cannot, under the First Amendment, say that you only get federal funds if you agree to not partake in this kind of speech that is protected by the First Amendment. And this language goes even farther than that and says any entity that merely employs someone who engages in this kind of speech.”
Iodice pointed out that the legislation being proposed left a lot up to law enforcement or the president to interpret what qualifies as condoning or celebrating political violence and that that definition could swing based upon who is in office at the time.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that media outlets who were “unfair” to him “maybe” should be prosecuted for hate speech.
“It kind of illustrates why hate speech is such an amorphous category,” Iodice said. “It would be nuts if the federal government or any government could ban or otherwise regulate hate speech, because it is in the eye of the beholder. The president regards hate speech as speech that was critical of him or whatever he said in that clip.
“Other people think that saying ‘marriage is between one man and one woman’ is hate speech. Some people think that some of the things Charlie Kirk said are hate speech.”

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s governor is ordering the state’s public health managers to come up with state-specific rules for the COVID vaccine.
Gov. Tony Evers issued an executive order to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to “use every lever and take every action available to ensure Wisconsinites can access safe, effective vaccines.”
“RFK and the Trump Administration are inserting partisan politics into health care and the science-based decisions of medical professionals and are putting the health and lives of kids, families, and folks across our state at risk in the process,’ the governor said in a statement. “Here in Wisconsin, we will continue to follow the science to ensure Wisconsinites have access to the health care they need when and where they need it to make their own health care decisions that are right for them.”
Robert F Kennedy Jr. has changed the recommendations for the COVID vaccine, but he has said he has not restricted their access.
Under Kennedy, the FDA last month rolled back COVID shot recommendations to people more than 65, and anyone more than 6-months-old who have underlying health conditions that increase their risks from COVID.
“Vaccines save lives, folks. Spreading fear, distrust, and disinformation about safe and effective vaccines isn’t just reckless, it’s dangerous,” Evers added.
In addition to the order to DHS, Evers is also ordering Wisconsin’s Commissioner of Insurance and the Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board to ” identify, review, and remove barriers to vaccine access to the fullest extent permitted by law and available funding to ensure vaccines remain broadly and readily accessible to Wisconsinites.”
The governor wants the Commissioner of Insurance to also work with health insurers and other health plans to see who will pay for COVID shots in Wisconsin that may not be covered in other states.

(The Center Square) – Nick Jacobs was struck when he saw Wisconsin state Sen. Kelda Roys’ ad announcing her campaign for Wisconsin governor on Monday morning.
There were photos of President Donald Trump, then Elon Musk, along with the words, “As extremists attack our freedoms while families struggle to get by, we’re fighting back together.”
Those, Wisconsin College Republicans chairman said, are the type of words that lead individuals to political violence like occurred last Wednesday when Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while debating on the campus of Utah Valley University.
“After watching it, and sort of talking about it, Senator Roys’ rhetoric, calling President Trump and Republicans extremists, that’s exactly the language that got us to this point as a country,” Jacobs told The Center Square. “There has clearly been no self-reflection after the events of this past Wednesday and it looks like Senator Roys and the Democrats want to continue to push harmful rhetoric towards Republicans.”
The Center Square was unsuccessful prior to publication obtaining additional comment from Roys’ campaign.
Jacobs and his group concentrate on getting college students involved politically, often working on local campaigns, local elections and in student government. The University of Wisconsin-River Falls student said that included volunteering during Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent trip to La Crosse.
But the words of politicians have come under greater scrutiny for their risk following Kirk’s shooting, the shooting and killing of Minnesota House Speaker Emeritus Melissa Hortman and her husband and the assassination attempts on Trump in July and September of last year.
“The concern is that you are basically trying to say that the other half of the country is dangerous, which is not true and those are not American or Wisconsin values to say something like that,” Jacobs said. “It’s very irresponsible.”
In particular, Jacobs said, the comments are directed at Trump.
Jacobs said that he mainly operates the Wisconsin College Republicans account on X.com, where he directly commented with a quote of Roys’ campaign video, writing, “After a radicalized leftist Democrat killed Charlie Kirk in cold-blood, they’re calling us the extremists. This is unacceptable. Not only is this a tone-deaf ad and unbecoming of a gubernatorial candidate, it is deeply sick and evil.”
Jacobs said he was led to send the message after thinking further about Roys’ video and discussing it.
“They continue to push him as this incredibly dangerous figure, you are giving this message to impressionable people who might be convinced to do terrible things or, at the very least, it sort of saturates our environment with rhetoric to the point where it is impossible to escape it,” he added.
That’s why Jacobs plans to push hard for a Republican to be the next governor of Wisconsin, he said.
“We can’t have another far-left ideologue as the governor of Wisconsin,” Jacobs said. “We need somebody who is a strong conservative who wants to restore normalcy and sanity to our great state. I think somebody like Congressman Tom Tiffany would be excellent, if he were to decide to run.”

(The Center Square) – One of the Democrats running for Wisconsin governor says he wants a commission to take a look at new ways to raise state revenues.
“The way we are taxed in our state, in the state of Wisconsin, is antiquated. We put everything, all of our revenues, pretty much on the backs of all our property tax owners,” Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said on a local broadcast this past weekend. “So there are ways we can look at different ways in raising revenues for many of our local communities so they can invest in things that matter to them.”
Crowley said he is not looking to raise taxes. Rather, he said he wants a commission to look at the options. He wants Wisconsin less reliant on property taxes.
“There’s an opportunity to create a blue ribbon commission to get folks from all across this state to come to the table to tackle our tax code entirely,” Crowley said. “Whether we’re looking at property taxes, how the shared revenue formula works, how we’re funding our public schools, it’s not a one size fits all solution that’s going to be able to solve the issues in the state of Wisconsin.”
Crowley, in the broadcast, said he doesn’t have a new option that he favors.
Crowley touted his campaign for governor, saying he’s “the only candidate in this race that has both experience serving in the Legislature as well as actually running a government.”
Critics say he ran Milwaukee County into a $47 million deficit, and Crowley pushed for a sales tax for Milwaukee County that added nearly a half-a-cent to the price of many things sold in the county.
Crowley officially jumped into the race to replace Gov. Tony Evers last week.