A projected decline in Wisconsin’s working-age population means the state needs to build fewer housing units than previously expected, according to a new report.
The post Report: Wisconsin’s shrinking working-age population reduces projected housing need appeared first on WPR.
The Rhode Island House of Representatives debates the fiscal year 2027 state budget in Providence on Friday. A new survey of state budget officers found many states face ongoing budget pressures. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
The most recent budgets proposed by governors across the country reflect ongoing financial pressures for states as they expect modest revenue growth, rising prices and federal policy changes.
Most governors recommended state budgets for fiscal year 2027 that would essentially keep spending flat from the general funds that pay for most state services. That’s according to the Fiscal Survey of States by the National Association of State Budget Officers. (Forty-six states will begin the 2027 fiscal year in July.)
The survey of budget leaders found nearly half the states were implementing some form of spending cuts to balance the books.
In their budget plans, 14 states said they would eliminate vacant positions, four reported hiring freezes and eight reported changed retirement benefits to reduce costs. Four states reported layoffs and cuts in employee benefits.
“While budgets are tightening, states overall remain in a strong fiscal position due to steps taken in recent years to manage spending carefully and build reserves,” Alexis Sturm, director of the Illinois Governor’s Office of Management and Budget and current president of the National Association of State Budget Officers, or NASBO, said in a news release.
The survey found that most states planned to increase the size of their rainy day funds: 25 states project those reserves to grow in fiscal 2027, 10 expect theirs to decrease and 11 states expect no change in dollars unadjusted for inflation. Four states did not report.
But researchers at The Pew Charitable Trusts earlier this year found that the power of those reserve funds is weakening as states confront rising costs. Pew researchers concluded that the median state in 2025 could fund its operations on reserve funds for 47.8 days — down from a record 54.5 days in fiscal 2024.
States pay for most spending from three primary tax revenues: sales and use taxes, personal income taxes and corporate income taxes. In the recent survey, 29 states reported tax revenues were coming in higher than forecasted for fiscal year 2026. Nine states reported collections were on target, while 11 said their revenues were below expectations. One state did not report on revenue collections and NASBO noted the revenue numbers may change following the April tax season.
In their budgets, governors proposed a mix of tax increases and decreases for the upcoming fiscal year that NASBO says will collectively have a near-zero net impact on general fund revenues.
With federal stimulus dollars and strong consumer demand, states recorded record revenue growth in fiscal years 2021 and 2022. But NASBO expects more modest growth for state revenues in the coming years with a slower national economy, the impact of state tax cuts and changes in federal tax policy.
“States are continuing to navigate a tighter fiscal environment than they experienced earlier this decade,” Shelby Kerns, executive director of NASBO, said in a statement. “While revenues in most states are meeting or exceeding forecasts, growth remains modest and many states are seeing ongoing spending demands outpace recurring revenue growth in the out-years.”
Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Children at Forever Young childcare center in suburban Green Bay engage in "parachute play." (Photo courtesy of Cindy Veeser)
In the eight years that Cindy Veeser has operated her childcare center in the Green Bay suburb of Bellevue, Forever Young, she has provided an essential service — but she has also faced almost constant challenges.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic a few years ago, things got a little easier. Federal pandemic relief funds gave childcare providers like Veeser a new safety net — support and stability that they hadn’t known previously.
In Wisconsin the money went to thousands of providers, including Veeser, through Child Care Counts, a $20 million-a-month childcare stabilization fund that paid providers a monthly stipend.
The money helped childcare centers stay open and increase pay for childcare teachers, all without increasing costs for the parents depending on childcare so they could work.
“Federal stabilization funding prevented system collapse, supporting 5,762 programs, 75,740 educators, and more than 430,000 children, while helping reverse a decade long decline in licensed child care,” the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association states in a report issued in May.
“It made everything possible,” Veeser says of Child Care Counts. “My teachers were getting paid a little bit closer to what they should have been making at that time.”
The money didn’t just go to wages. “There wasn’t one thing that it didn’t help cover,” Veeser says.
At the end of this month, however, providers will lose the last vestige of that support. One year of “bridge” funding from the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget ends June 30, and childcare providers across Wisconsin are unsure what happens next.
“We’re holding things together the best we can now,” Veeser says. “I just see us falling behind.”
More than a year ago one out of four Wisconsin provides told researchers that without Child Care Counts funding they could close down entirely.
More than one in three said they would probably reduce the number of hours they could provide child care. And nearly three out of four said they would have to increase the fees they charge parents.
The survey results were reported in March 2025 by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. At the time, Wisconsin child care experts were looking ahead to June 2025, when the federal funds that paid for Child Care Counts would run out.
2025-27 state budget childcare funds In addition to the $110 million one-year childcare bridge program, the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget included $66 million from general purpose revenue that will go to providers in a new preschool program for 4-year-olds starting later this year. Another $123 million was directed for increases in the Wisconsin Shares childcare subsidy program for low-income families. Smaller amounts were funded to offer centers bonuses for infant and toddler care in return for agreeing to higher ratios of children to teachers, to provide grants to centers expanding their capacity and additional funding for childcare resource and referral agencies.
Providers, advocates, Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats in the Legislature had hoped for $480 million in the 2025-27 state budget to continue the stabilization program. What they got was less than 25% of that: $110 million for one year of stabilization funds that ends June 30.
WECA’s May report looked to the 2025 UW survey to forecast what could follow, and solicited new comments from providers.
“I believe that the numbers we reported on, which are the most recent data we have, are going to be much higher in reality,” says Paula Drew, WECA’s director of early care and education policy and research.
“Every provider is talking about the cost of what they’re paying for everything.” in comments submitted to WECA, Drew says. “Many, many, many of them said, ‘I will price parents out and I will likely close,’ or ‘I’m planning on closing because there’s no way I can pay my teachers less.’”
As fees rise, some families drop out of childcare programs. “There’s a huge, growing trend of under-enrollment due to parents not being able to afford the increases that they already have in tuition,” Drew says.
In The Beginning Child Care and Preschool operates centers in Boscobel, Prairie du Chien and Dodgeville, each licensed for 50 children.
“Child Care Counts was a huge difference in our operations,” says director and owner Beth Markut. “We were able to give the staff a minimum of a $2-an-hour raise. We were able to afford new supplies. It was a game changer for us.”
It also helped Markut and her husband, Patrick, open the center in Dodgeville, where they live, in 2023. “I don’t know if we would have done that if we hadn’t had Child Care Counts, but my guess is probably not,” Markut says.
When Wisconsin cut Child Care Counts payments in half in 2023, In The Beginning increased tuition by 2.5% to 3%, Markut says, and she expects a similar increase after the bridge payments end.
In The Beginning’s increases have been modest compared with those in a state survey, which reported increases for infant care ranging from 11% to 14%, according to WECA.
Nevertheless, Markut says, “I’ve had four families leave our Dodgeville center because it’s cheaper for them just to stay at home” instead of both parents working.
Markut says she’s confident that In The Beginning can keep operating, but she also hopes that lawmakers will come around to the need for ongoing childcare support.
“I don’t think they understand what our profession does through day in and day out,” she says. “If they really understood they would support us, but they don’t. It doesn’t just affect us, it affects the broader economy.”
Shelly Boelter has operated a family child care program in the community of Hager City in northwestern Wisconsin for 23 years.
The family care license is limited to eight children at a time. Boelter built her home with the lower level as childcare space designed into it from the start. “When I was 12, this was what I dreamed of doing,” she says.
Child Care Counts enabled her to take a better wage, cover expenses and put some money away for retirement. That ended when the stabilization stipend was reduced.
To keep going, “I’ll be spending less on things that we could use, to try to just keep it affordable,” Boelter says.
She says she tries to avoid raising rates for families who already have children enrolled, however, because “I don’t want money to be an issue for them to leave.”
As a result, fees vary from one family to another. In the coming months, she expects to raise her rates for new clients, however. “Probably a 25% increase would not be unrealistic,” Boelter says.
She would need even higher increases to fully cover escalating costs, “but families would not be able to afford it,” she says. “I have some families with three children here. They can’t afford that cost for themselves and actually make a living, either.”
With the bridge funding ending and a significant number of programs at risk of shutting down, advocates say their focus now is on the 2027 state budget, which will be hammered out by a new governor and a new state Legislature.
And the childcare economy is likely to become even more precarious.
“The stabilization funding in Wisconsin did some really remarkable things, and it’s really, really sad that we’re just going to see those things roll back,” Drew says.
“There’s a lot of different ways to approach the next budget,” says Ruth Schmidt, WECA executive director — from a new system of direct payments like Child Care Counts to new tax policies or tapping a revenue source, such as legalizing cannabis and then taxing it as a dedicated childcare funding stream.
“The bottom line is, this all is revenue. There’s no way to fix childcare to make it affordable for families, to make it stable within an economy without paying for it,” Schmidt says.
“So, is it going to get worse? We anticipate it’s going to get worse,” she says. “We anticipate it getting significantly worse. And every possible strategy needs money. We can’t just rely on providers to continue to sort of take this on their backs, and it’s not good for them, and it’s not good for kids and families.”
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New federal dollars could extend the life of one of Wisconsin’s remaining coal power plants.
The Trump administration plans to spend $425 million to support operations at 13 coal plants in 10 states, arguing the move will help meet rising electricity demand and preserve thousands of jobs tied to the ailing coal industry. The White House will do so by invoking the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law that gives the president broad authority to accelerate American industrial output at times of crisis.
Some of that funding could go to Madison-based utility Alliant Energy, which told Wisconsin Watch that it applied for a $19 million grant to extend the life of coal-powered units it owns at the Columbia Energy Center near Portage in central Wisconsin. The utility previously planned to retire the plant’s coal units before the end of the decade.
President Donald Trump announced the action from the Oval Office Thursday, highlighting that the coal plants set to benefit are all in states he won during the 2024 election.
“Wisconsin put you over the edge,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., interjected, standing among the gaggle of Republican lawmakers and Cabinet officials behind the president.
“Our action will allow these facilities to invest in upgrades that will extend their operational lives for decades into the future, reinforce the reliability of our electrical grid … and keep electricity prices low for the American people,” Trump said, adding that the move may also bolster the nation’s artificial intelligence boom.
The administration will also distribute $200 million in Department of Energy grants to reopen a coal plant in Maryland and build the first new coal plants in the U.S. in over a decade: one in Alaska and another in West Virginia.
The Trump administration has already intervened to block the retirement of coal plants in Michigan, Indiana and elsewhere. But the White House did not pair those earlier orders with funding to support ongoing operations, so ratepayers across most of the Midwest — including in Wisconsin — will pick up the bill for those extensions.
Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB) and other Midwestern ratepayer advocacy groups have since filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit challenging federal orders blocking the closure of the Michigan and Indiana plants. The costs of extending aging coal plants’ operations “are adding to an affordability challenge customers are already experiencing in Wisconsin and nearby states,” said CUB Wisconsin Executive Director Tom Content.
Alliant has already pushed back the retirement dates for its coal-powered generators at the Columbia Energy Center and Edgewater Energy Center in Sheboygan. The company initially pledged to shut down the last coal generator at the Columbia plant by 2024; Alliant did not clarify the new expected life span of the plant.
The Edgewater plant is slated to transition to natural gas generation by 2029.
Coal generation accounts for a declining share of Wisconsin’s and the Midwest’s overall energy mix. Natural gas surpassed coal as the state’s primary fuel for generating electricity in 2022.
Wisconsin ratepayers owe at least $1 billion to pay off debts tied to retired coal plants, including We Energies’ now-shuttered Pleasant Prairie Power Plant in Kenosha County.
Extending operations at Alliant’s remaining coal plants could reduce the amount ratepayers will still owe when those facilities eventually close.
Wisconsin clean energy advocates reacted with alarm to the White House’s doubling down on coal generation.
“Burning coal in Wisconsin releases a long list of toxic chemicals and heavy metals, both into the air and water,” said Clean Wisconsin spokesperson Amy Barrilleaux. “No one in Wisconsin is asking for more mercury, arsenic, lead or soot. But we will be getting all of it, especially as the Trump administration dismantles pollution safeguards at coal plants, insisting more power is needed for the ‘AI data center revolution.’”
“It’s also important to note that burning coal is one of the most expensive ways to produce energy in Wisconsin — far more expensive than wind and solar farms, which are the cheapest,” she added. “So Wisconsinites will have higher energy costs and will be paying for the health costs, the longer we burn coal in this state.”
Alliant has scaled up investments in renewable energy generation in recent years, buoyed in part by clean energy tax credits extended by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. The U.S. Department of Energy also agreed to back $3 billion in loans supporting Alliant’s wind generation and battery storage buildouts in the final days of the Biden administration.
The Trump administration has since largely reversed Biden-era tax incentives for renewable energy development. In its 2025 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Alliant noted that the termination of clean energy tax credits could “adversely impact” the company’s finances.
The company did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the status of Department of Energy financing for its wind and battery storage projects.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued Thursday that clean energy tax incentives created a false impression of the viability of renewable energy sources. Wind energy developers, he said, “weren’t trying to generate electricity. They’re just trying to generate tax credits.”
“Energy shouldn’t need subsidy,” Trump responded.
Editor’s note: This story was updated on June 5, 2026 to include information from Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin power plant could benefit from Trump’s $425 million coal push is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Generac's sales of industrial-scale generators have been rising based on demand from data centers and its stock price has more than doubled since the start of the year. The company is expanding in Wisconsin, with plans to open a new factory to meet growing demand.
The post Generac lands new data center deal as sector drives improved sales outlook, stock price appeared first on WPR.
A dozen Wisconsin state lawmakers are urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject a utility coalition’s request to pause competition for major electrical transmission projects in the Midwest.
The lawmakers — eight Assembly Republicans and four Senate Republicans — argued in a letter to the commission that competition for electrical transmission is a net positive for ratepayers, who stand to benefit from lower costs and increased innovation. That outcome, lawmakers wrote, “is even more urgent today given the rising issue of customer affordability.”
The utilities requesting a pause dispute whether competition truly lowers final costs for customers, but that argument is secondary to their primary concern: Powering the Midwest’s data center boom will require vast electrical transmission upgrades, and major regional utilities argue that competition only slows down projects needed to bring data centers online before international competitors overtake the U.S. in the artificial intelligence race.
Among the utilities behind the request are Xcel Energy, owner of Northern States Power Company-Wisconsin, and American Transmission Company (ATC), Wisconsin’s largest electrical transmission operator.
The state lawmakers cast the utilities’ request as the latest stage of a long-standing fight over transmission market competition — one that has unfolded in the Assembly over the last five years.
Ratepayer advocacy groups successfully lobbied FERC, which oversees utilities nationwide, to introduce competitive bidding for regional transmission projects in 2011, arguing that the previous model — allowing local monopolies to build all projects planned within their territories — all but guaranteed inflated costs.
The shift triggered a nationwide gold rush for transmission projects. Regulators pre-approve developers’ “return on equity,” or profit on each dollar invested, for transmission construction, so winning a project means picking up a reliable revenue stream.
Dozens of developers have since bid on transmission projects planned by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the nonprofit that manages the wholesale electricity market for much of the Midwest. MISO has approved more than $32 billion in new transmission projects since 2022 — projects largely planned before the region’s data center boom reached full swing.
The rush to win projects has placed well-established local utilities like ATC in competition with powerful national utilities venturing outside of their traditional territory, international developers venturing into the U.S. market, and startups backed by private equity firms.
As data center developers rapidly scale up Midwest operations, the pace of transmission upgrades could become a choke point.
In March, MISO reversed its decision to award substations in Fond du Lac, Ozaukee and Sheboygan counties to private-equity-backed startup Viridon, instead handing the projects to ATC.
ATC’s initial bid was more expensive than Viridon’s, but the company successfully argued it alone could build the substations in time to serve the nearby Vantage data center campus in Port Washington. Viridon had not yet secured Public Service Commission permission to operate in Wisconsin — a hurdle ATC does not face.
MISO initially aimed to complete the substations by 2033; the Port Washington data center plans to come online in early 2028. Though ATC emerged victorious, it told FERC that the 15-month delay between MISO’s initial approval of the substations and the reversal was “completely unnecessary.”
In the utility coalition’s initial request to FERC, it cast competition-related delays as a national security threat.
“These projects — expressways for power — are as critical to meeting today’s challenges as the Eisenhower interstate highway system was to prevailing in the Cold War,” the utilities argued in their initial filing. “China has devoted itself to overtaking America as the world’s AI leader and is just months behind.”
The utility coalition proposed two options: Allow MISO, along with the grid operator for parts of the Great Plains and Southwest, to exempt transmission projects from competitive bidding on a case-by-case basis or suspend competition entirely for the next five years — “when our country must begin building the infrastructure that will decide which nation wins the AI race,” the utilities wrote.
Ratepayer advocacy groups immediately pushed back. Paul Cicio, chair of the nationwide Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition, called the request “tone deaf.”
“Suspending competition for five years,” he wrote in a press release, “would expose consumers in these regions to unchecked cost escalation for years, guaranteeing higher utility bills.”
In a protest filed with FERC in late May, Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board pointed to the Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line in southern Wisconsin as an example: The 102-mile project was not subject to competitive bidding, and construction costs came in roughly 40% over budget by the time ATC, Dairyland Power Cooperative and ITC Midwest completed the line in fall 2024.
Opponents of the utilities’ request recognize that the data center boom complicates the playing field for transmission competition.
“Timelines are looking different than the industry is used to,” said Caitlin Marquis, managing director of Advanced Energy United, a trade group representing an array of clean energy and energy efficiency industries. “Transmission competition has been facing curveballs and challenges since it was introduced,” she added. Many challenges result from lobbying by incumbent utilities, and data centers’ speedy construction cycles are only the latest addition.
Her organization opposes the utilities’ request, arguing that incumbent utilities have a long track record of delaying non-competitive transmission projects — and that regulators should streamline the bidding process rather than forego competition entirely.
But utilities argue competitive bidding has yet to prove its worth. While MISO generally favors lower-cost bids, an ATC spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch, “evidence of a low bid is not evidence of cost savings.”
Bid prices often do not match the final project cost, they added, and substantial overruns are common, even on projects with competitive bidding.
As regional grid operators introduced competitive bidding for transmission projects a decade ago, utilities turned to state legislatures for right-of-first-refusal, or ROFR, laws.
Those laws give local utilities first dibs on transmission projects within their territories, including those planned by regional grid operators like MISO.
Michigan and Minnesota adopted such policies; Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down a ROFR law in 2023.
Utilities have backed similar proposals in Wisconsin each year since 2021, including a 2025 bill introduced by outgoing Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.
Those proposals would have “insulat(ed) incumbents from market discipline” and left ratepayers holding the bag, the Wisconsin lawmakers argued to FERC.
“Having failed repeatedly to persuade the Wisconsin Legislature,” they continued, “the same incumbent entities are now pursuing an end-run at FERC.”
ATC maintains that options before FERC would “not operate as a substitute” for a ROFR law, “even temporarily.”
The utilities don’t stand alone before FERC. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a union representing the tradespeople who build and maintain transmission lines, also backs the request to pause competition.
Editor’s note: This story was updated June 4, 2026 to include comments from Caitlin Marquis, managing director of Advanced Energy United.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin lawmakers oppose utility push to pause competition for power line projects is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Wisconsin's Joint Committee on Finance voted to sell the former State Human Services Building to Landmark Development Services Company for $10 million.
The post Budget committee OKs sale of state building that’s being eyed for Amtrak station appeared first on WPR.
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The Wisconsin Legislature’s budget committee authorized $7 million in state funds Tuesday so that a state agency that supports Wisconsinites with disabilities entering the workforce can draw down a waiting list of more than 7,000 people.
The Joint Finance Committee voted unanimously for the funding, but members first argued over why the panel didn’t act sooner to provide the money.
The Division of Vocational Rehabilitation in the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development reported in November that it faced a shortfall under the current state budget.
For people with disabilities who are seeking work, DVR provides career services including training as well as technical assistance for employers. The agency typically works with about 19,000 clients at a time, according to DWD. DVR receives federal funds to cover 78.7% of its annual costs, with the state required to cover the remaining 21.3% under federal law.
The 2025-27 state budget added $3.8 million for the agency, bringing state funding to $21.3 million, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
In November, the agency announced it was $4.6 million short of what was needed for the 2025-26 fiscal year. Because of that shortfall, the agency instituted a waiting list for people needing the DVR’s services.
“While we’ve been able to support existing program participants, all new applicants have been forced to wait for services, leaving over 7,600 Wisconsinites with disabilities currently on the waitlist to receive career services,” said DWD Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek in a statement Tuesday from the department. About 1,000 people seeking services are added to the waitlist each month, according to DWD.
DWD asked the finance committee for $4.6 million for the budget’s first 12 months, 2025-26, and another $6.4 million for the second 12 months, 2026-27.
Tuesday, the budget committee’s Republican majority on a 4-11 vote rejected a bid by the committee’s four Democrats to honor that request.
“It just stuns me that this committee wouldn’t take every opportunity to make sure that we have a zero waitlist opportunity so that people with disabilities can enter the workforce, pay taxes, and contribute to our economy,” said state Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) after the vote. “Are we really saving money by preventing people from working and not doing everything we can so that there’s no waitlist for this program?”
Instead, the majority proposed a $600,000 appropriation for the first year, which ends June 30, and the full $6.4 million sought for the second year. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected the appropriation would enable the waitlist to be closed by the end of June 2027. The proposal passed 15-0.
The funds were made possible in part because a $20 million appropriation for dairy farm aid that passed the Senate died in the Assembly, said Sen. Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond).
DWD will draw down the waitlist by first giving priority to people with the most serious disabilities, followed by people with less severe but significant disabilities and finally people whose disabilities do not seriously limit their functional capacity or require people with multiple services.
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The average price for a pound of beef hit a record-high $9.64 in April. Steak and ground beef prices are both up more than 14 percent compared to this time last year. An agriculture professor says these prices are on the rise and a butcher shop owner shares what he’s seeing.
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A pair of Wisconsin academics note the Pope’s sentiments capture concerns over the explosion of artificial intelligence at a time when public policy isn’t keeping pace.
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Employees restock groceries at a Target store in Minnesota. More states, including Minnesota, are launching automatic retirement programs for those without access through their employers. (Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer)
The racial wealth gap is widening as many workers of color go without retirement savings.
The median wealth gap between Black and Hispanic families and white families expanded by about $50,000 between 2019 and 2022, according to research from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The typical white family had $240,000 more wealth in 2022 than the typical Black family and $223,000 more than the typical Hispanic family.
Much of that disparity is caused by white families saving more for retirement than members of other racial and ethnic groups, Pew said. Retirement savings, not home equity, is the largest driver of American household wealth, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
To help close the racial wealth gap and ensure more people save for retirement, Pew has been advocating for the creation of state and city-sponsored automatic retirement programs to help cover the more than 50 million Americans who don’t have retirement plans through work.
Those programs, called automatic Individual Retirement Accounts, or IRAs, have been growing in popularity: More than 1.2 million workers across the 15 states with active programs have collectively saved $3 billion for retirement through state-sponsored plans, according to tracking from the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives.
Minnesota recently launched its auto-IRA program that aims to cover workers at all employers with five or more employees. Hawaii’s program is set to launch this year, with Washington state starting its plan next year.
Those programs often capture lower-income workers who tend to be Black and Hispanic, said John Scott, director of Pew’s retirement savings project.
“I think these programs are doing what they’re supposed to do, which is really reaching those workers who have their access to retirement benefits cut off just by virtue of where they work,” he said.
Auto-IRA programs require most employers without retirement offerings to set up payroll deductions for their workers, but do not require any employer match. Employees are automatically enrolled, but can choose to opt out, leading to higher participation rates than if workers were required to opt in to save with the plans.
Employees often contribute post-tax earnings to Roth IRAs, which means they can generally withdraw all or part of their contributions (but not investment returns) without penalties or taxes. That allows workers to not only start building retirement accounts, but to save up for unexpected or emergency expenses, Scott said.
That may also help states persuade workers to stay enrolled in automatic retirement plans.
Georgetown’s tracking shows about 35% of California participants opted out of that state program, while more than 37% opted out of the Illinois program.
In addition to a formal survey, Pew hosted an online discussion to ask Black, Hispanic, Asian American/Pacific Islander, and Native American/Indigenous workers about their views on wealth. Many of those workers did not view wealth in terms of the classic definition of assets minus debts. They instead prioritized financial security, which they saw as a more important goal than simply building wealth.
“What came through in these comments was that wealth to them is really security, and security in the sense of I have some certainty in my life about the income that’s coming in and the bills that have to be paid,” Scott said. “And I don’t really have to wonder if I’m going to have enough at the end of the month after paying off everything that I owe.”
While many people argue against allowing any withdrawals from retirement accounts before workers hit retirement age, Scott said more flexible programs such as the state-sponsored auto-IRAs provide workers with more security.
“You have to meet people where they are,” he said. “And the reality is that if we’re going to ask people to save for the long term, we need to help them build that resilience for the short term.”
Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Matthew Jacobson found his calling in middle school history class.
As a sixth grader at St. John Vianney Catholic School in Brookfield, he voluntarily completed additional research projects and jumped at the chance to present to his classmates. He never saw the extra assignments as work — he was having fun. When Jacobson’s teacher told him he’d make a great educator himself, he set his sights on the profession. In high school, he participated in Elmbrook School District’s future teachers program and planned to enroll in university for his teaching degree.
But life had other plans. Several weeks before his high school graduation, Jacobson was forced to move out on his own. He picked up a cooking job to “pay the bills and survive.” The gig didn’t leave extra money or time for college.
“I didn’t really know how to get back into college and go meet my dream,” Jacobson said.
Two years later, he heard about a novel apprenticeship program, where future teachers earn money working in schools as they obtain their education and certifications.
“I was like, ‘That’s my way back in,’” he said.
State officials launched the program in 2024 to ease the educator shortage by offering students an alternative route to the profession — one where they don’t have to put their careers on pause while racking up student debt. Jacobson is one of the first eight teacher apprentices.
Today, Jacobson has returned to Elmbrook to serve as a classroom aide. In two years, he’ll have the proper training for the district to hire him as an elementary or middle school teacher.
But as participants reach the program’s halfway point, its future beyond this initial “pilot” phase is unclear — raising questions about whether apprenticeships will become a viable solution to Wisconsin’s struggle to find and keep educators.
While the route has been life-changing for students like Jacobson, program leaders are having trouble enticing school districts to take on more apprentices. Enrollment has ground to a halt; the two technical colleges involved don’t have any new students signed up to begin in the fall.
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development officials say whether the program continues or grows depends on if districts get on board and sponsor trainees to join up. But district leaders say a major hurdle is the cost — a key appeal of an apprenticeship is the employer paying them for the time they spend learning, but many public schools are already strapped for cash. Some want more funding tied to the program.
“(It’s) stalling a little bit,” said Trent Sorensen, a Fox Valley Technical College dean. “We don’t have any (students) coming in for the fall. … There’s plenty of time, but it’s not taking off like it did in other states, and it’s simply because of the funding.”
Wisconsin schools struggle to find enough teachers needed to lead classrooms — a problem largely fueled by poor retention and new workers moving to other states after graduating.
In 2024, Congress came through with some assistance: $570,000 in federal funds earmarked for establishing a teacher apprenticeship program in Wisconsin.
Officials from DWD, the Department of Public Instruction, the Wisconsin Technical College System, and two universities teamed up to debut the pilot in January 2024. They praised the “earn-while-you-learn” approach to establishing a pipeline of workers: Districts could guarantee they’d have future teachers, while also filling lower-skilled jobs in the meantime.
Typically, aspiring teachers work a shorter classroom internship while studying for their bachelor’s degree and then complete a semester of student teaching after graduating. The apprenticeship is “taking that entire approach and flipping it on its head,” said Nick Abbott, senior program and policy analyst at the Bureau of Apprenticeship Standards — creating a potentially more accessible path to the profession.
“Traditional educator preparation programs can be expensive, as they often require unpaid student teaching, which might not be feasible for low-income students, nontraditional students, or individuals looking to change careers,” Gov. Tony Evers said when the program launched. “The new teacher apprenticeship pilot program will help address issues in turnover and retention, reduce barriers, and encourage young people to enter the field.”
Apprenticeships are becoming more common in Wisconsin in fields ranging from plumbing to nursing. Participation has hit record highs for the last four years. These gigs are far more common for hands-on jobs in the skilled trades than fields like education and health care, but that’s changing with initiatives like the teacher apprenticeship program.
Here’s how it works: A school district hires an apprentice, who enrolls at Fox Valley Technical College or Waukesha County Technical College for two years to complete a Foundations of Teacher Education associate’s degree. When finished, the student transfers to Lakeland University or the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater at Rock County to finish a bachelor’s degree.
Throughout those roughly four years of schooling, the apprentice works inside the classroom as an assistant for 32 hours each week and spends eight hours a week learning at college. The school district the person works for pays an hourly wage for those 40 total hours. When apprentices finish the training, they’re qualified to work as a classroom teacher.
“Nothing prepares you for doing this job, other than doing the job,” Jacobson said. “Being at a school working with kids is easily 10 times more important than any of the classes I’ve taken, and I get way better experience and much more value out of just doing it and learning through failure.”
As a way of incentivizing the program during its infancy, the eight students get half of their tuition costs reimbursed with federal grant funds.
Four districts participate in the pilot: Wauwatosa, Greendale, Elmbrook and Appleton. The districts are not required to pay for the remainder of the apprentice’s tuition — Elmbrook, a relatively wealthy district, was the only one that did.
State leaders also hope the apprenticeships might help with teacher retention. Teachers will start with four years of classroom management experience already under their belt, far more than usual. Plus, other teachers mentor them on the job. That essentially eliminates the difficult experience of being a first-year teacher, said Appleton Area School District Chief Human Resources Officer Julie King.
“Managing a classroom and the curriculum and all the demands of the job is very overwhelming after having maybe 18 weeks of student teaching experience,” King said. “To learn alongside a professional that has been in the career, knows all the ins and outs, has skill sets and strategies to work with students – to have that benefit of working alongside somebody like that for four years, you’re much, much better prepared.”
Given these promises, teacher apprenticeships have recently exploded nationwide — 45 states have brought programs online in the last few years. They vary widely in their funding approaches and in the costs to districts and students. States have often looked to Tennessee, the country’s first program, as a standout model. The state’s program, launched in 2020, now helps fund 600 new teacher trainees annually at no cost to the apprentices.
In his Foundations of Reading class last fall, Jacobson learned about phonological and phonemic awareness, or the ability to recognize distinct parts of a word — a key skill for learning how to read. Using what he learned, he started running his own reading support group for students needing extra help.
“The second you learn something, I don’t have to wait two years before I actually apply that knowledge to my job,” Jacobson said. “No, I’m applying it that same day or the next day, which then makes it stick a lot more.”
The program gets high marks from trainees and schools. So why aren’t more signing up?
Money. Both school districts and apprentices are struggling to afford it.
The four districts that already have apprentices are waiting until their current students graduate to decide whether to add more, Abbott said.
“I want to stress that the apprenticeship model itself remains available to all school employers in the state who wish to adopt it,” Abbott said. “It comes down to finding partners.”
But getting more of Wisconsin’s 400-plus districts to bite has been difficult.
Sorensen, the Fox Valley Tech dean, said the college isn’t seeing interest from districts because many are contending with too-tight budgets. School leaders have long argued the state’s funding system hasn’t kept up with rising costs, which, as Wisconsin Watch recently reported, has resulted in a recent wave of school closures, layoffs and budget cuts.
That’s made it hard for districts to pay for the hours when trainees are in college, and not working in the classroom.
“It’s challenging for school districts to be able to build in that release time. We did hear that, and that’s really understandable,” said Dena Constantineau, Waukesha County Tech’s associate dean of education and human services. “I mean, they really rely on their people, and so they need them in the classroom.”
Even with the discount from the federal grant, tuition can be costly. For example, the average annual tuition costs at least $5,900 for the technical college portion and about $6,000 for UW-Whitewater at Rock County. That means the leftover cost to apprentices could still be upwards of $12,000.
Plus, the federal funds that helped launch the pilot run out next March, so there could be even less tuition assistance for future apprentices.
The Appleton Area School District would love to put more students into the program, “if there was funding” to entice participants, King said. The district couldn’t afford to give students more tuition assistance, which hampered participation.
“The unknown for us moving forward is there is no state funding. If there’s other opportunities for that tuition relief for the individual, that’s really what entices people to engage in that program,” King said.
“The question on the future really is, ‘Where is the funding and the structures going to be in the future to make sure that it’s a viable option moving forward?’” King said. “‘That it reduces the financial barrier? That it’s accessible?’”
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagram and Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.
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An apprenticeship aiming to ease Wisconsin’s teacher shortage is ‘stalling.’ Will it catch on? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The median home cost in Wisconsin’s two biggest metro areas is at least five times the median household income in those communities, among the highest in the Midwest.
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The bipartisan bill to spend the state’s multi-billion-dollar surplus failed after all state Senate Democrats and three Republicans voted it down.
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A new zoning proposal in Milwaukee would essentially ban large data centers in the city and establish regulations for smaller data centers.
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Record-high diesel fuel prices in Wisconsin are starting to come down from their peak in mid-May, but the transportation industry in the state is still feeling the squeeze.
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Nurses at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison have petitioned for an election to vote on joining the Service Employees International Union. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
More than 800 nurses at a Madison hospital owned by a national nonprofit group will vote in the coming weeks on whether to join a union.
The organizing campaign at St. Mary’s Hospital is one of the largest in recent memory in Wisconsin.
In a statement earlier this month, a spokesperson said the hospital’s parent organization, SSM Health, “respects the right of its employees” to freely choose union representation. Nurses and the Service Employees International Union say the hospital’s management has responded with stiff opposition.
Union supporters are planning a rally Thursday afternoon in front of the hospital, with U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) among the featured speakers.
“There’s a national crisis facing both our healthcare system and the nursing workforce,” Pocan said in a statement issued Tuesday announcing the event. “St. Mary’s nurses are trying to address this crisis right here in our community by having a strong voice for better staffing and retention. SSM should respect their freedom to vote in a fair union election without any pressure campaign.”
The union election, supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, will be the largest such vote in recent memory in Wisconsin. A date for the election hasn’t yet been set, but it could be announced as early as this week.
It comes amid a rising interest in unions among healthcare workers — one that coincides with the growth of increasingly concentrated multistate healthcare networks, including nonprofit organizations.
“We’re seeing more union elections, we’re seeing more petitions for recognition of unions as well,” said Dr. Ahmed Ahmed, a research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School, in a panel discussion earlier this month conducted by Wisconsin Health News.
With mergers and consolidations, hospitals and health systems have grown larger and larger. Labor costs are their biggest expense, and in trying to trim those costs, they’re increasing caseloads and reducing the time patients have with their providers, Ahmed said. Healthcare workers are turning to unions in search of “one collective voice that is able to govern and be able to bargain for those things.”
Supporters of the St. Mary’s union campaign say that concentration is one of the reasons they’re organizing. Centralized decision-making at the Missouri headquarters of the parent organization have felt to some like a corporate takeover.
“There have been a lot more directives from corporate headquarters in St. Louis,” said Josh Taylor, a nurse in the hospital’s inpatient behavioral health unit.
St. Mary’s was one of several hospitals and healthcare facilities established by nuns from Europe and sponsored by Roman Catholic congregations in the 19th century. The facilities were only loosely connected until 1986 when the corporate structure changed with the creation of SSM Health, according to the SSM Health website.
SSM Health had been sponsored by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary until 2013, when sponsorship shifted to a new corporate entity, SSM Health Ministries, while remaining part of the Roman Catholic church.
SSM Health is headquartered in St. Louis and operates in four states — Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma — where it runs 24 hospitals and more than 540 other facilities, including doctor’s offices, outpatient services, home care and hospice programs.
According to SSM’s annual financial statements, SSM Health had $12.7 billion in revenues in 2025 and ended the year with a balance of $484 million in net revenue over expenses.
In 2014 SSM Health began applying its name to all of the healthcare facilities in its network. It also consolidated its business operations including human resources, finance, strategy and planning and marketing and communications.
With those changes, nurses who are supporting unionizing say that decision-making on day-to-day policies and practices has moved farther away.
“We watched our personalized policies for our hospital disappear,” said Lynette Willsey-Schmidt, a labor and delivery nurse who has worked at St. Mary’s for more than 11 years.
Willsey-Schmidt said labor and delivery nurses along with the doctors in the department had developed a series of practices to reduce intervention during births where risks and complications were lower. Those practices were welcomed by patients, she said.
But as SSM Health took charge of policymaking, “we were told we can’t do that anymore,” Willsey-Schmidt said, because those policies didn’t exist elsewhere in the SSM Health system.
Taylor said that while employee councils are supposed to relay feedback from the floor to upper management, they haven’t been effective.
“I’ve been on the unit councils,” he said. “We have tried the normal routes to bring our concerns to the table. We are heard, but nothing is acted on.”
When employees have raised concerns, “We’re told, ‘This is how it is. This is how all the hospitals have to do it,’” Taylor said.
Morgan Espich, an inpatient medical and surgical nurse, said the hospital recently purchased and began requiring nurses to use a new brand of intravenous pumps, different from what they had been using. She and her coworkers had been happy with the previous models, Espich said, and no one explained the reason for the change. “We just had to get new ones that no one asked for,” she recalled.
In addition, the hospital staff has to keep some of the older IV pumps on hand, said Carrie Schrank, an intermediate care trauma nurse, to substitute for the new pumps when they malfunction.
Nurses contend staffing levels have left employees straining to cover all their responsibilities, while nurses have been told to improve productivity.
“Productivity should be about patients’ outcomes,” Willsey-Schmidt said.
Consultants who visited earlier this year recommended ways to reduce staffing, but Schrank said their recommendations didn’t address how acutely ill some patients are.
“The days we’re busy, we go home and wonder, did I do enough?” Espich said.
SSM Health released a statement earlier this month in response to the Wisconsin Examiner’s submission of specific questions about the union campaign as well as a request for an interview.
“At SSM Health, we work hard to cultivate a supportive and collaborative work environment where every employee is treated with respect and compassion,” said the statement, delivered by Kim Sveum, SSM Health regional director of communications.
“We value our high-quality patient-centered care and place of healing. We strive to ensure that our team thrives so that they can do their best work in realizing our Mission to provide exceptional patient care.”
The statement concluded, “SSM Health respects the right of its employees to make a free and informed choice as to whether or not they wish to be represented by a union.”
Union organizers say that there have been extensive messages posted on employee bulletin boards disparaging unions and the SEIU and emphasizing employees’ right to decline to sign a union authorization card.
“They have been constantly intimidating staff,” Schrank said.
Employees typically attach their work badges to a retractable line coiled up in a holder called a badge reel that can be clipped to a lapel or pocket. When they made their campaign public, pro-union nurses began using a customized badge reel with an emblem, “St. Mary’s Nurses United.”
Supervisors have ordered employees to remove those badge reels. Espich and other nurses said they have been told that “this is soliciting” against hospital policy, and that nurses who don’t remove the badge reel would be sent home without pay for the day.
“With this union-busting, though, we’re all fired up even more,” Espich said.
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The Cargill plant in Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley was the last of what was once a vibrant meatpacking industry in Wisconsin's largest city. (Photo by Michael Rosen)
The announcement that Cargill is closing its Menomonee Valley plant and laying off 221 packinghouse workers is just the latest blow to Milwaukee’s industrial working class. It marks the end of more than 150 years of meatpacking in the Menomonee Valley. It is a cautionary tale illustrating how huge, highly concentrated industries dominate the United States economy to the detriment of workers, family farmers and consumers.
Meatpacking was one of Milwaukee’s leading industries through much of the 19th and 20th centuries. The industry and city grew together as firms slaughtered, processed and packaged livestock — particularly hogs and cattle — purchased from local farmers and distributed products for regional, national and international markets. Because the work was hard, dangerous, cold and dirty, it provided an entry into the working class for Milwaukee’s newest residents — immigrants from Germany, southern and eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th Century, then from the Jim Crow South, Mexico and more recently even Myanmar and the Middle East
Some of Milwaukee’s most iconic names are associated with meatpacking. John Plankinton, for example, opened a butcher shop in 1844 on what is now West Wisconsin Avenue, and John and Frederick Layton opened Layton and Son a short time later on what is today North Water Street. In 1852 the Laytons partnered with another firm to establish a larger meatpacking operation in the Menomonee Valley. As the marsh was filled in and canal and rail networks developed, the valley’s large, flat areas emerged as an ideal location for the city’s fledgling meatpacking district that lasted until Cargill announced it was closing its last remaining Milwaukee plant.
The loss of the plant’s 221 jobs was not preordained or a consequence of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Rather it was the direct result of anti-union corporate policies and the federal government’s failure to pursue existing anti-monopoly regulations that once protected regional meatpacking firms, their unionized employees and the ranchers and farmers who produced the cattle.
The Sherman Antitrust Act, the nation’s first law to prohibit monopolistic business practices, was actually passed following a congressional investigation of price fixing in meatpacking. Five companies — Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson and Cudahy, together known as the Beef Trust — controlled 55% of the market at the beginning of the 20th century. For decades, the federal government tried to break up the Beef Trust without success. But after an FTC inquiry concluded that these companies had conspired to raise prices and shared livestock information to lowball ranchers for their cattle, the Beef Trust members were forced to sign a consent decree in 1920.
The agreement required them to sell off their stockyards, retail meat stores, railway interests and livestock journals. A year later Congress created the Packers and Stockyards Administration (PASA) to prevent price fixing and monopolistic behavior. These changes established federal oversight over the industry and helped reinvigorate packinghouse workers’ efforts to unionize, which culminated in the 1930 industrial union drives. In the decade after World War II, almost 90% of the industry was unionized. Pattern bargaining established master agreements that standardized wages, benefits and working conditions at the major packing companies. Smaller firms signed contracts that matched those at the larger firms. Packinghouse workers’ wages rose to 20% above average manufacturing wages.
For the next 50 years the large meatpackers competed with hundreds of small regional firms like those in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley. As recently as 1970 the nation’s four largest meatpackers slaughtered only 21% of the nation’s cattle.
But beginning in the 1960s packinghouse workers and their unions came under attack when Iowa Beef Processors was organized as a nonunion operation in the countryside of Iowa and Nebraska, far from the unionized urban meatpacking centers. Currier Holman, one of its founders, was blunt, declaring, “Business, as we pursue it here at IBP, is very much like waging war.” Iowa Beef used its cost advantage to undermine the unionized packing plants. “The price cut should be deep enough to force some of our competitors . . . out of business,” declared IBP vice president Perry Haines in the early 1970s, according to an internal memo disclosed years later in court records.
And Iowa Beef was successful. Profits at the country’s largest meatpacking firms soared as labor costs declined and labor productivity increased. In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, more than a thousand packing plants closed. Between 1963 and 1984, the number of packinghouse workers in urban areas fell by more than 50,000; workers in rural plants went from 25% of the national workforce to 50%. Packinghouse workers’ wages were decimated. By the 1990s, packinghouse workers’ wages were 20% less than the average manufacturing wage. Today, meatpacking workers are among the lowest paid and most exploited manufacturing workers.
In 1975, Milwaukee was the scene of a heroic fight that packinghouse workers and their union waged against the draconian cuts in compensation and to protect their jobs. It began with a contract proposal from the Milwaukee Independent Meatpackers Association, representing eight companies in the city, that slashed wages and benefits. Local 248 of the Meat and Allied Foodworkers Union went on strike.
The day the strike began, the eight employers began hiring replacement workers, some recruited from as far away as Nebraska and Texas. It was the first attempt by Milwaukee employers to bust a union since World War II. The Menomonee Valley filled with angry picketers — Black, Latino and white, rallying together to protect their jobs. But after 15 months, the employers association had their victory and decertified the union, while hundreds of hard-working union men lost their jobs. Full-time permanent employees were replaced by low-wage workers, frequently hired through temp agencies. The strike legitimized replacement workers, setting off waves of attacks on Milwaukee’s working class and their unions, including at Patrick Cudahy 10 years later, and contributed to the economic collapse of Milwaukee’s Black community.
As the strike dragged on, Bernie Peck, the owner of Peck Packing, the largest of the firms in the employers’ association, bought out smaller firms in the group. He eventually sold the company to Sara Lee Meat Group in 1985. Sara Lee Meat Group was sold to Emmpak, which was eventually sold to Cargill Inc. — today one of four meatpacking firms that control the U.S. market. Cargill shuttered most of the Milwaukee operations in 2014, laying off over 600 workers, leaving only the ground beef plant that is now being eliminated, the last remnant of the historic Menomonee Valley meatpacking district.
Today, Cargill, the largest privately held company in the United States, and the other three giants — Tyson Foods, JBS USA and National Beef — dominate more than 80% of the U.S. fed-cattle market. That gives them near-total control over cattle prices and the national beef supply chain, a power they have abused relentlessly against ranchers and consumers alike. The words of Upton Sinclair from “The Jungle” ring as true today as when he wrote them in 1906: “They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people.”
In February 2025, JBS USA agreed to pay $83.5 million to settle a class-action antitrust suit alleging that the company, along with Tyson, Cargill and National Beef, colluded to suppress the prices paid to ranchers and inflate downstream margins — one of several cases documenting the industry’s monopoly practices. In October, Tyson and Cargill settled for a combined $87.5 million. These are not isolated incidents but part of a broader price-fixing economy, in which the meatpackers share market data, restrict capacity and move in lockstep to extract profit from both ranchers and consumers. The meatpackers also delay slaughter schedules to force ranchers into distressed sales and manipulate captive-supply contracts that lock independent producers into one-sided terms.
The repeal of Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) has amplified meatpackers’ power. With labeling transparency gone, packers can legally import cheap beef from Mexico, Brazil, or Argentina, blend it with U.S. product, and sell it under a domestic label. Consumers pay premium prices believing they’re buying American, while ranchers receive depressed bids for cattle amid increasing import competition. COOL’s repeal effectively legalized country of origin misrepresentation, enabling packers to and reap near-monopoly profits from deception and price fixing.
While ranchers lose leverage and see their herds shrink, and consumers pay more at the supermarket, the meatpackers’ margins have soared. USDA data show that the gap between what ranchers are paid for cattle and what consumers pay for beef has widened sharply in recent years — clear evidence that meatpackers are capturing an ever-larger share of the final beef dollar even as U.S. cattle inventories decline.
The result is a market that looks competitive on paper but operates like a monopoly — where a handful of corporations control price setting, labeling, and distribution from feedlot to grocery shelf.
The number of workers in the industry has fallen precipitously, while output per worker has increased by 79%, according to the Department of Labor. In essence, fewer people are producing more and working harder. As the meatpackers increased chain speeds, the number of debilitating injuries to workers caused by the repetitive motions of their arms, wrists and hands began increasing. Labor Department figures show that from 1973 through 1986, the number of workdays lost each year to injury or illness at meat plants rose from 136.6 per 100 workers to 238.3. By contrast, among manufacturers overall, lost workdays over the same years hovered between 70 and 90 per 100 workers and at several points dipped below 70.
The attacks on packinghouse workers’ unions and the increased economic concentration of meatpacking firms are bad for workers, ranchers and consumers. And it is not an anomaly. Most important sectors of the United States economy — industries as varied as airlines, cereal, soft drinks, fire trucks and even concert ticket sales — are dominated by a handful of firms. The result is monopoly profits for the companies while workers are exploited. Meanwhile the consumers and the suppliers that survive are at the mercy of these ravenous companies.
The lack of antitrust action has destroyed an iconic Wisconsin industry and the jobs of its packinghouse workers. The end of Cargill is a canary in the coal mine for the U.S. economy.
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The economic impact of cruising on the Great Lakes is projected to be more than $300 million this year, up 25 percent from last year.
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Kevin Warsh, left, takes the oath of office from U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, right, as Warsh's wife Jane Lauder looks on during his swearing-in ceremony to be the new chairman of the Federal Reserve in the East Room of the White House on May 22, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Kevin Warsh assumed his new role as chair of the Federal Reserve Friday after a swearing-in ceremony in the White House East Room, where U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the oath of office.
President Donald Trump said before a crowd of high-profile former and current lawmakers and officials that he wants Warsh, of Florida, to be “totally independent.”
“I want him to be independent and just do a great job. Don’t look at me, don’t look at anybody, just do your own thing and do a great job,” Trump said.
Warsh vowed to be a “reform-oriented” leader in brief remarks after he was sworn in as the 17th Fed chair by Thomas. Warsh’s wife, Jane Lauder, held a Bible for him.
“Our mandate at the Fed is to promote price stability and maximum employment. When we pursue those aims with wisdom and clarity, independence and resolve, inflation can be lower, growth stronger, real take-home pay higher, and America can be more prosperous, and no less important, America’s place in the world more secure,” said Warsh, who previously served as a Fed board governor during the 2008 global financial crisis.
Also at the ceremony was Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom Warsh worked with at the White House during President George W. Bush’s administration.
Warsh’s swearing-in ceremony caps Trump’s long campaign of public attacks on former Fed Chair Jerome Powell, appointed by the president during his first term in 2018.
Trump ramped up threats over the past year to fire and replace Powell if he did not lower interest rates.
With the November midterms less than six months away, Trump is increasingly facing economic headwinds as inflation hit its highest mark last month since 2023, and the president’s approval ratings on the cost of living continue to sag.
Trump’s feud with Powell reached a boiling point in January when the Department of Justice opened a criminal probe into Powell and the central bank over the multibillion-dollar cost to renovate the Fed’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. After being subpoenaed, Powell issued a rare public video statement dismissing the investigation as a maneuver to weaken the Fed’s independence.
Trump’s investigation into Powell marred his nomination of Warsh, even within his own party. The retiring U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., withheld his key committee vote to advance Warsh’s nomination to the Senate until the Department of Justice announced in late April it would drop the probe.
Just over a month prior to the administration nixing the case, a federal judge had blocked the DOJ’s criminal subpoenas, citing “abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair.”
Trump is also tangled in litigation after attempting to fire Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook. The Supreme Court is reviewing whether Trump overstepped his presidential authority when he fired her without cause.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, issued a scathing statement Friday morning questioning Warsh’s transparency about his investments during the nomination process, and alleging he will not remain independent from the president.
“Kevin Warsh starts his tenure with his credibility in tatters. Having proven himself to be Donald Trump’s sock puppet, I worry Mr. Warsh will prioritize the President’s political interests over the economic well-being of American families,” said Warren, D-Mass.
Powell will stay on as a member of the Fed’s board of governors.
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