Wisconsin’s Brain Drain Ranks Second-Worst In Nation, Report Finds
New analysis shows young college graduates leaving faster than they are arriving, worrying business leaders.
Graduation
More college-educated workers move out of Wisconsin each year than move in, leading to what economists call “brain drain.”
A new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum finds that Wisconsin has the second biggest net loss of young, educated workers in the country, surpassed only by North Dakota. And this can have major ripple effects on the state’s overall economic growth.
To determine the rate of brain drain, the researchers used U.S. Census data from 2024 to compare workers in their 30s who were either born in Wisconsin or moved to the state from elsewhere. They found that about 60 percent of people born in Wisconsin who live in another state have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 45 percent of people who moved to Wisconsin from out of state.
“It’s a pretty big gap,” said Joe Peterangelo, research director at the Wisconsin Policy Forum and one of the report’s co-authors.
That gap matters for Wisconsin’s workforce because jobs in growth industries increasingly require a college education. “That’s the direction the economy has been heading,” Peterangelo told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
“Our previous research found that a majority of job openings in Wisconsin that pay at least $50,000 per year and were expected to open up by 2030 are in occupations that typically require bachelor’s or advanced degrees,” he continued. “It’s really important to have the workers to fill those roles as they come available.”
Business groups in Wisconsin are concerned about the downstream effects of losing so many educated workers to other states. Dale Kooyenga, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his organization thinks about brain drain “on a weekly basis.”
Other states trying to curb their own “brain drain” have rolled out policies aimed at retaining educated workers. For example, Minnesota has a network of initiatives to recruit people to move to rural areas of the state. And Ohio has launched a program offering discounted mortgage rates to recent college graduates.
While brain drain is a “long-standing challenge” for the state going back to at least 2009, Peterangelo said, the report identifies a silver lining in Wisconsin’s above-average education levels.
“We outperform the nation on college completion in general, so among people born in Wisconsin, they’re more likely to earn a college degree — whether they stay in Wisconsin or move to another state — than the national average,” Peterangelo said. “That helps because we start in a stronger position, and so even though we’re losing some of those adults, we end up looking pretty average on educational attainment.”
The impact of ‘brain drain’ on rural communities
The effects of brain drain are especially pronounced in rural areas of the state, where it can be harder to fill critical jobs in fields like healthcare and pharmacy.
Tessa Conroy, associate professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an economic development specialist with UW Extension, told “Wisconsin Today” that rural communities “have been worried about this for a long time.”
“It can be a hard pill to swallow for rural communities and rural families to see some of their talented young people leave and never come back,” Conroy said, “especially at a moment when rural communities are hurting for healthcare professionals, veterinarians, lawyers, teachers and filling local leadership positions.”
Rather than trying to bring in companies and jobs as they did in the past, rural communities are now thinking more about attracting people and families, Conroy said. One big way is to boost amenities like affordable housing, access to child care and strong internet connectivity.
“The focus for a lot of rural communities is just creating that place that ‘boomerang migrants’ — those young people that leave — that they want to come back to,” she said.
While the Midwest on the whole is a big region for brain drain, the report finds, Wisconsin might be particularly vulnerable to the phenomenon because of its proximity to major job hubs like Chicago and the Twin Cities.
“When we look at the big cities in Wisconsin, they’re just not in the same weight class as some of the big cities in our neighbors,” Conroy said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Wisconsin is failing or not doing well. When we look at those quality of life metrics, when we look at livability, Wisconsin really has a lot to offer.”
Wisconsin has second-largest ‘brain drain’ in the country despite high education attainment was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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I think Jim Russell, a notable rust belt blogger from Pittsburgh area made compelling arguments on how brain drain can be a powerful component of long-term economic success – expanding Milwaukee’s (and Wisconsin’s) connections to other areas, through “boomerang” migration and people returning with new skills and connections. https://burghdiaspora.blogspot.com/2009/09/pittsburgh-plugs-brain-drain.html
Microsoft’s $7 billion of investments (and counting) in Pleasant Prairie could be an example of this process with Brad Smith’s connections to SE Wisconsin perhaps playing some role in the investment decisions. Dwight Diercks, the NVIDIA executive, and MSOE graduate, is another good example – with his >$50 million in donations to date to support advanced computing and AI initiatives at MSOE. Would Wisconsin have been better served if these two hadn’t departed for careers in Santa Clara and Belleview, but stayed in Wisconsin?
There are relatively few tech jobs in Wisconsin (Epic being a notable exception). Coasts are where young graduates from UW are flocking to because it pays best and has the tech sectors that are leading our country’s economic growth.
Recruiting tech to our state will not only be difficult, but have major downsides for the culture and the COL. We should perhaps consider living a different way. Does a 50k job really warrant a degree requirement? Especially when a decent ranked education could cost 100k plus in loans?
Mandatory higher ed for job placement is a regressive requirement that filters out competent humans and widens wealth gap. How about an initiative by the state to improve access to apprenticeships in white and blue collar non trade roles?
For engineers and scientists, the work in WI that is exciting is very limited, particularly in Milwaukee. Other Midwestern cities like Minneapolis have more tech options, and the midwest has nothing on the coasts or even Atlanta. I use the word “tech” here to mean technologically advanced products of all kinds, not google/meta/amazon/openAI/etc customer facing software companies like the media uses the word to describe.
Recognizing the existence of the state’s brain drain will not help us solve it unless we understand what drives individual graduates to leave Wisconsin. That means we need to examine the economic pressures graduates face. One major problem is student debt. This is one reason to forgive student loans or help them pay it off. This would be an effect as well as proven way to draw college graduates to rural jobs. It would entice graduates to forgo the higher paying jobs in Chicago and the Twin Cities. Such a strategy would, with discounts on mortgages, would help with the state’s current brain drain.