A federal official has affirmed the pro-union vote at a West Allis mental health clinic, rejecting challenges to the outcome lodged by Rogers Behavioral Health.

The decision, issued Oct. 15 by National Labor Relations Board regional director Jennifer Hadsall, certifies the National Union of Healthcare Workers as the official representative for employees at the Rogers West Allis clinic.

Hadsall also rejected a series of challenges that Rogers management made in connection with the election, held April 22, when employees voted 53-4 for union representation.

The union was previously certified to represent employees at Rogers’ Madison clinic, where employees voted 26-4 in favor of the union, also on April 22.

Rogers Behavioral Health, based in Oconomowoc, operates a network of mental health hospitals, residential treatment clinics and outpatient clinics in 10 states. Employees at three clinics in California and one in Pennsylvania organized with the National Union of Healthcare Workers starting a few years ago.

In a statement issued Monday, Rogers acknowledged the union had been certified at both Wisconsin locations but declined to respond to questions about the organization’s next steps, including whether it would begin bargaining with the union.

The organization’s statement said Rogers was “unable to comment further on pending legal proceedings related to these certifications.”

A certification order can be appealed to the full National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. Rogers declined to answer directly when asked if the organization’s management was appealing the certification decisions to the board.

The West Allis certification order rejected a series of objections to the election outcome, including claims that three fired employees trespassed on the day of the vote. An administrative law judge upheld the right of the fired employees to vote and found no evidence of trespass, and the new order upheld those findings.

The certification order follows a finding, also issued by Hadsall, a week earlier that Rogers violated federal labor laws before, during and after the election, including by firing six employees involved in the union organizing campaign. A hearing on the NLRB complaint is scheduled for December.

Rogers Behavioral Health violated federal labor laws when it fired six employees amid a contentious union organizing campaign in Wisconsin, according to a National Labor Relations Board official in a new complaint against the healthcare provider.

Rogers officials also violated labor laws when they accused the employees of criminal conduct and threatened them with criminal charges, civil charges, litigation and professional misconduct complaints, the NLRB complaint charges.

Those actions took place starting two months before employees at Rogers’ clinic in West Allis voted to be represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, and continued on the day the vote was held and in the weeks that followed, according to the complaint.

Rogers executives fired the employees because they “supported and assisted the Union and engaged in concerted activities, and to discourage employees from engaging in these activities,” the complaint states.

The complaint, issued Oct. 8 by Minneapolis-based NLRB regional director Jennifer Hadsall, set a hearing on the allegations to start Dec. 14 before a labor relations board administrative law judge in Milwaukee.

In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon on behalf of Rogers by a staff communications, marketing and public relations specialist, the organization declined to comment on the allegations or “pending proceedings” because the case is “an active legal matter.”

The statement asserted that Rogers respects “all employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act” and conducted “all employment and labor practices” according to “applicable law and longstanding policies.”

Rogers Behavioral Health, based in Oconomowoc, operates a network of mental health hospitals, residential treatment clinics and outpatient clinics in 10 states.

Employees at three clinics in California and one in Pennsylvania organized with the National Union of Healthcare Workers starting a few years ago.

Spurred by policy changes that employees said led to increased client caseloads and reduced one-on-one care for clients, therapists and other behavioral health professionals at clinics in Madison and West Allis began organizing with the NUHW in 2025.

After a contentious organizing campaign that was met with strong opposition by Rogers management, on April 22 West Allis employees voted 53-4 and Madison employees voted 26-4 in favor of the union.

Rogers has declined to recognize the union at either clinic and has mounted an appeal to overturn the West Allis vote.

First firings after union drive goes public

Rogers fired three West Allis employees who were union supporters in February, shortly after they went public with a petition for union recognition.

According to the NLRB complaint, a Rogers manager directed the fired employees “not to discuss their terminations.”

At the same time, Rogers’ President and CEO, Cindy Meyer, directed employees in writing “to keep their terms and conditions of employment confidential,” the complaint states.

With those instructions as well as some broad Rogers policies directing employees to keep information confidential, Rogers officials were “interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of the rights” guaranteed under the National Labor Relations Act, the complaint states. The confidentiality policies, quoted in the complaint, are not limited to information about individual patients.

The union filed charges with the NLRB on behalf of the three employees fired in February. The charges enabled them to vote in the West Allis union representation election on April 22.

When they showed up at the clinic to vote, a fourth employee escorted them to the polling area where they cast their ballots, which were set aside as challenged under standard NLRB procedures. The employee then escorted them out of the clinic.  

According to the complaint, Rogers suspended that employee the day of the vote and fired her five days later because she “assisted employees participating in the NLRB-conducted election” — and because she “supported and assisted the Union and engaged in concerted activities, and to discourage employees from engaging in these activities.”

That violated federal labor law by “discriminating against employees for their participation in a Board-conducted election,” the complaint states.

Matt Artz, a spokesperson for the NUHW, said Rogers tried to challenge her application for unemployment insurance but that the challenge was rejected.

Two other employees were also suspended on the day of the vote and fired five days later, the complaint charges — also because they supported the union and to discourage other employees.

Complaint charges attorney’s letter ‘coerced employees’

In the six firings, Rogers was “discriminating in regard to the hire or tenure or terms or conditions of employment of its employees, thereby discouraging membership in a labor organization” — also a labor law violation, according to the complaint.

The NLRB complaint also charges that an attorney representing Rogers wrote a memo to employees that “coerced employees” exercising their rights under federal labor law “by repeatedly characterizing protected employee activity as criminal activity, in violation of civil laws, and as professional misconduct; and threatened employees with criminal charges, civil charges, litigation, and misconduct complaints with their respective professional organizations for having engaged in protected activity.”

A Rogers vice president, Steven Hertig, sent a complaint against one of the fired employees, Kate Zolandz, to the state Department of Safety and Professional Services, which oversees professional licensing

The NLRB complaint doesn’t mention the license challenge, but the NUHW said in a press release Tuesday that in the filing with DSPS, the Rogers executive claimed that when Zolandz donned a cape during her lunch break on the day of the vote, “a patient became dysregulated.”

After reviewing the complaint, however, DSPS officials wrote back to an attorney representing Zolandz that the information in the licensing challenge “does not indicate a violation” of relevant state administrative codes or laws.

“We took a stand to improve care for our patients, and Rogers executives tried to ruin our careers,” said Zolandz in a NUHW press release Tuesday. “Rogers acted like it could do anything to us it wanted, so it’s great to see that the federal government is holding Rogers accountable to the law.”

The photograph with this report has been updated to correct its source.

As the nation’s physician shortage worsens, some fear the Trump administration’s immigration policies will dissuade or prevent doctors who earned their medical degrees in foreign countries from practicing in the United States.

Among all U.S. doctors, an estimated one quarter were educated abroad. But they make up an even larger proportion of physicians in many specialties, including internal medicine (41%), endocrinology (46%) and geriatrics (52%).

The U.S. has long welcomed foreign-educated physicians as a way to ameliorate its doctor shortage. Already, an estimated 102 million Americans live in communities that don’t have enough primary care providers, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. The agency projects a shortage of 141,160 full-time physicians by 2038.

Foreign-educated doctors are slightly more likely than American ones to work in areas with a shortage of primary care providers. And doctors who are here on H-1B visas — a federal program that allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire non-citizen workers for health care jobs and other positions requiring specialized knowledge — are more likely to work in high-poverty areas.

But last August, the Trump administration issued a rule increasing the fee for employers hiring workers through the H-1B visa program to $100,000, up from between $2,000 and $5,000. It also has issued a travel ban on residents of 39 countries. And earlier this month, the U.S. State Department broadened its “online presence review” of applicants for H-1B and other visas to ensure that they do not “pose a threat to national security or public safety.”

“The United States remains vigilant throughout the visa issuance process to confirm that applicants do not intend to cause harm to Americans or threaten U.S. interests,” the State Department said in its announcement of the expanded vetting.

Dr. Tarun Ramesh, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School, said Trump’s policies will make it more expensive for hospitals and other healthcare employers to hire foreign physicians and might dissuade many international doctors from coming here at all.

“We’ve created a system where we depend heavily on physicians trained abroad, and at the same time, we create immigration policies that make it harder for those physicians to enter, to train, to remain in the country,” Ramesh said. “And that intersection of both the health workforce and immigration workforce and immigration policy makes it a clear tension.”

Both left-leaning and conservative states have taken steps to attract foreign physicians.

As of the middle of this year, about two-dozen states of every political bent had enacted laws to make it easier for foreign nationals to get their U.S. medical licenses.

Georgia Republican state Sen. Dr. Ben Watson, who co-sponsored a law in his state, said there simply aren’t enough U.S. medical school graduates to keep pace with population growth. He said one of his main goals is to increase the number of doctors in rural areas.

“We did it in several different stages to assure quality,” Watson said. “Hopefully we can encourage rural migration from that standpoint, also.”

Since 1994, states also have used the federal Conrad 30 Waiver Program to boost the number of doctors in underserved areas. The law allows a limited number of foreign medical school graduates who have trained in the U.S. using a J-1 visa to waive the normal requirement that they return to their home countries for two years before applying to come back — as long as they practice in an underserved area.

In increasing the H-1B visa fee, the Trump administration argued that some employers, especially tech companies, have abused the program by using it to replace native-born workers with foreigners who will work for less, rather than using it to fill jobs they can’t find Americans to do.

“American IT workers have reported they were forced to train the foreign workers who were taking their jobs and to sign nondisclosure agreements about this indignity as a condition of receiving any form of severance,” President Donald Trump said in the executive order he issued in September 2025. “This suggests H-1B visas are not being used to fill occupational shortages or obtain highly skilled workers who are unavailable in the United States.”

But 20 Democratic-led states sued to stop the fee increase, and in June a federal judge ruled in their favor. The administration was thwarted again in September, but it isn’t giving up: its latest proposal is to levy a $103,265 fee for a subset of H-1B applicants.

Even as the legal wrangling continues, the administration’s proposal has had an effect. In November survey of its members, the American Hospital Association found that 64% of hospitals that utilize the H-1B program had paused, deferred or limited recruitment because of the possibility of the $100,000 fee.

Andrew Wizner, an attorney who represents medical institutions that hire foreign medical school graduates, said the onslaught of new rules, legislative holdups, and confusing court decisions almost certainly has dissuaded some H-1B and J-1 visa applicants from applying to practice or train here.

“If you’re outside the U.S. and loosely following, (you might think) ‘Oh, there’s this rule, and I heard a court may have set it aside, but I don’t really know how their system works, their judicial system, and what that means,’” Wizner said.

He said the message that foreign-educated doctors are receiving is a simple one: “Don’t come here.”

Bradley Cunningham, a regulatory affairs and policy analyst at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said most hospitals simply can’t afford to navigate the new legal challenges and fees associated with H-1B visas.

“There’s a tremendous amount of confusion and misinformation about what’s going on,” Cunningham said. Like Wizner, he said he suspects the uncertainty swirling around H-1B visas is causing many would-be applicants to think twice about coming to the U.S.

“We can’t determine causality, but I can’t imagine that that is helping the situation any more when you’re talking about having to commit your family to come overseas to train at an institution and not having security or assurance that you can complete your training.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Wisconsin has spent decades building one of the country’s strongest apprenticeship cultures. 

In 2025, the state reached record Registered Apprenticeship participation, with 18,524 apprentices across more than 3,095 employers. Youth Apprenticeship also reached record scale, enrolling 11,344 high school juniors and seniors and partnering with 7,447 employers.

Now Wisconsin needs to apply that same learn-by-doing discipline to the artificial intelligence transition.

Stanford Digital Economy Lab’s August employment update found that employment among U.S. workers ages 22-25 in highly AI-exposed occupations is about 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations. The comparable measure was 15% at the July 2025 data vintage. The adjustment is appearing mainly through reduced hiring, especially where AI automates tasks people previously performed.

That matters because entry-level work is not just cheap labor. It is the training ground where people learn how an organization actually operates.

A junior analyst becomes valuable by seeing why a clean spreadsheet can still produce a bad decision. A new claims employee learns which apparently routine case contains the one fact that changes everything. A beginning marketer learns that a polished message can still be wrong for the audience. Those lessons come from repetitions, exceptions and coaching.

If AI performs the first-pass work and the employer simply eliminates the beginner, Wisconsin gets an efficiency gain today and a capability problem later.

The state should encourage an apprenticeship dividend for AI adoption. Employers that save meaningful labor time through AI should reinvest a defined share of those savings into structured learning for newer workers. That can mean mentor hours, supervised exception cases, verification rotations, paid internships or registered apprenticeship slots in occupations that have not traditionally used apprenticeship language.

Wisconsin already has the machinery to support this. Its 2026-2028 Youth Apprenticeship grant program is designed to sustain and expand work-based learning partnerships among schools, employers, colleges, workforce boards and other local organizations. The state is also directing workforce funding toward advanced manufacturing and AI through WisTRAIN, including training for human-AI collaboration.

What is missing is a measurement standard for the human side of the investment.

Employers should track time to independent competence alongside time saved. How long does it take a new worker to verify an AI-generated answer, catch an exception, explain the trade-offs and make a sound decision without close supervision? If that clock slows down even as the productivity dashboard improves, the organization is consuming its own future talent.

Wisconsin’s apprenticeship tradition offers a better path. Use AI to remove repetitive preparation, then move beginners more quickly into the work that requires judgment. Give experienced workers explicit coaching responsibilities. Make the workplace an extension of the classroom, just as the Youth Apprenticeship program already does.

AI productivity should not mean a thinner career ladder. In Wisconsin, it should fund a faster one.

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., is a behavioral scientist, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts and author of “The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results.” He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Guest opinion: Wisconsin should make an AI productivity fund apprenticeship 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.

This story was originally published by Wisconsin Watch.

Americans are getting older. In 2025, nearly 19% of the U.S. population was over 65, and the majority of them will need long-term care.

Some home health agencies and nursing homes in Wisconsin have had to give up on plans started years ago to hire overseas workers after President Donald Trump’s administration suspended nearly all refugee programs. The administration also terminated Temporary Protected Status for people from 13 countries, which industry leaders say is weakening an already struggling workforce that helps care for the nation’s older adults and disabled population.

“We have basically cut off or severely limited every pipeline that we have for bringing in, for welcoming foreign-born workers, many of whom end up working in our sector in aging services. … We don’t have a sort of ready supply of U.S.-born individuals who are clamoring to work in aging services, and that’s not a new issue,” said LeadingAge CEO Katie Smith Sloan.

The workforce issue affects member agencies of LeadingAge, a national network of nonprofit nursing homes, home health and other organizations that serve older adults. Sloan said when long-term care facilities have to turn people away, that puts extra burdens on hospitals and family members to fill care gaps.

“We’re seeing home health agencies just not able to take new clients. We’ve seen nursing homes that have closed beds and closed wings,” Sloan said.

According to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, 30% of all direct care workers nationwide are immigrants. These workers include nursing assistants, personal care aides and home health aides who provide people with disabilities and older adults assistance with daily living or medical care.

Long-term care is important for people like Myranda Gereau, who lives in Sheboygan. She is quadriplegic, has a tracheostomy and needs 24/7 care. At 30 years old, she’s struggled for years to find nurses to provide in-home care, constantly worrying about her nurses’ schedule and whether she will be able to continue living independently.

“This is literally my life we’re talking about,” Gereau said. “This isn’t ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t come in. I have to take off.’ That’s not how health care works. There are people’s lives that are needing care, and then when you take that caregiver out of the equation, those people suffer.”

Robin Wolzenburg is the current director of operations at Koru Health, which operates multiple senior living communities across Wisconsin. In her previous role at LeadingAge Wisconsin, she worked with resettlement agencies to place refugees in nursing home positions.

Wolzenburg’s efforts stopped in January 2025 when the Trump administration suspended refugee programs. Officials implemented the policy change because the U.S. was not able to support new refugees without “compromis(ing) the availability of resources for Americans,” according to a White House statement.

“We saw just a marked halt in refugees coming in. It didn’t seem like it was a trickle – it just seemed like it stopped,” Wolzenburg said.

Staffing issues for long-term care are so severe that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to make it easier for immigrants to get long-term care jobs. State Sen. Jesse James, R-Thorp; Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay; and Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, D-Milwaukee, co-authored legislation that passed in April allowing DACA recipients to obtain professional licenses in nursing and other fields.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects home health aide jobs to grow by 847,000 over the next 10 years — the most of any job sector in the country. However, the median salary for home health and personal care aides was $35,800 in 2025, making it hard to attract workers.

“We don’t have domestic workers. I mean, we just don’t,” Wolzenburg said. “The market is so tight, and the competition is so tight, and caregiving is a tough job, it really is. You’re caring for the most vulnerable people in our population.”

For organizations that provide long-term care, not having enough workers means more people aren’t able to continue living at home or have to find care in a community even farther away. Wolzenburg said many assisted living facilities have had to limit admissions.

“You have a resident or an elderly person who is looking to come and reside in their own community, where they’ve maybe been in for the last 50, 60 years of their life, maybe longer,” Wolzenburg said. “That assisted living or nursing home in that community may or may not be able to meet their needs because they don’t have enough staff.”

Recruiting overseas workers is simply a smart business strategy, Wolzenburg said, and a necessary one.

“Obviously we want to support newcomers no matter what, but we also don’t have the domestic staff and the luxury of not engaging this population,” Wolzenburg said.

Multi-year hiring strategies overturned

Kate Battiato, vice president of media and community impact for LeadingAge Wisconsin, helps serve nonprofit long-term care providers across the state. Some members invested significantly in recruiting international staff, she said. One CEO of a nursing home in Sparta invested over $100,000 into building five apartments for new overseas workers. When immigration policy changed and visas became difficult to procure, he had to pivot. Instead, he used the housing for current workers.

“International recruitment is a multi-year strategy, and it doesn’t happen overnight,” Battiato said. “One election can change the strategy that has been built over years. … It makes their already difficult challenges recruiting and retaining workers more difficult.”

Still, leaders are able to use innovative strategies to retain current workers and attract more domestic employees. Battiato said her members are used to thinking on their feet and quickly developing new strategies to address staffing gaps.

“They’ve actually seen a lot of success in recruiting and retaining workers from their local community using that same workforce strategy of worker housing that was originally developed for international workers,” Battiato said.

Valley VNA Senior Care in Neenah, a nonprofit that provides both in-home and assisted living services, has not only lost out on international workers it planned to hire, but also staff who were under Temporary Protected Status. HR Coordinator Cheryl Ehlers said losing those employees fed into the turnover the organization was already experiencing.

“We did have some staff that unfortunately had to go back,” Ehlers said. “We lost them as staff members because they lost their protected status, and they are always welcome to come back to us if they’re able to return to the United States.”

Temporary Protected Status applies to immigrants from specifically designated countries that have been deemed unsafe due to a crisis, such as war or natural disaster. TPS allows them to live and work in the U.S. temporarily.

The Trump administration has terminated 14 TPS programs, affecting people from 13 countries. Nearly 350,000 Haitian immigrants lost TPS on Aug. 4. An estimated 53,000 TPS holders worked in health care in 2024, according to data from KFF.

In a press release, the Trump administration reaffirmed that the Temporary Protected Status program was always meant to be temporary and that Haitians could pursue legal status through other means. The Supreme Court backed the terminations of TPS for Haitians and Syrians in a June ruling.

Ehlers, who has worked at Valley VNA for over two decades, said the organization had also been trying to hire 15-20 workers from overseas for at least the last five years, but ultimately stopped hearing from the partner agency it was working with.

Haitian caregivers in Wisconsin lose immigration status

Marc Christopher, an immigration attorney who represents some of the hundreds of Haitian immigrants in central Wisconsin, said many of them work in home health care and nursing. Haitians in Wisconsin are losing their work permits and immigration status and are facing deportation.

“It’s a lose-lose-lose for our community,” Christopher said. “Number one, the employers that are employing people to provide the care, they’re losing valuable labor, people who are helping. For the people that they’re taking care of … they’re getting good quality care. And then obviously, it’s a lose for my clients, who are in a desperate situation because they’re now being told that they have to go back.”

The country is still considered unsafe due to gang violence and humanitarian crises. The U.S. Department of State issued a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory in July. According to a 2025 press release, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem determined conditions had improved enough for Haitians to return.

Christopher is in the process of helping clients apply for asylum, which takes years. He stressed that most Haitians came to the U.S. legally under Temporary Protected Status. For the time being, many Haitians are weighing their options.

“So now they have to make that decision,” Christopher said. “Do they file for asylum, or do they simply go back, or do they live in this perilous state where they don’t have any status? … And that’s what affects our community. … Their kids go to school with my kids. They are working in our community.”

Zabi Sahibzada is the refugee resettlement director for Jewish Social Services of Madison. With no one new coming in, he’s trying to focus on supporting the refugees and immigrants who are already here. Three full-time and one part-time caseworker manage more than 500 individuals in addition to those who knock on their doors every day.

Out of his clients who are in the workforce, Sahibzada estimates 30% lost their jobs in the medical sector. They now need help with food, rental assistance, medical services and legal services, and JSS has limited funding.

“Some of our clients who used to work in those health care providers and the places like health care facilities, and some even providing transportation to the health care facilities, they have been losing their jobs,” Sahibzada said. “They have lost their driving licenses. They have lost their eligibility status.”

When a direct care worker loses their job, it can also mean a deeply personal relationship is “shattered,” Sloan of LeadingAge said.

“You’ve been there for four years and have had the same caregiver who knows everything about you, knows your birthday, knows what you like to eat for breakfast, knows what time you like to go to bed, knows what movies you watch … suddenly, that person is ripped away from you, which is what has happened recently with TPS,” Sloan said. “You’ve really lost an important part of your life.”

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of five news outlets.

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• Free, simple tools can help people measure the change in inflation and see whether their pay is keeping up. 
• Experts Wisconsin Watch spoke to said that if your wage hasn’t changed and inflation rises, your real earnings decrease. 
• Workers can use inflation calculators to seek a raise if their real wages have dropped.

Inflation hit a three-year high in May, leaving a growing number of Americans struggling to afford necessities. The rate has since slowed a bit, but most prices aren’t likely to come down. Analysts say “affordability” could be one of the deciding issues in this fall’s midterm elections. 

But while we all notice the spike at the gas pump and the cash register, many people may not realize they can use simple, free tools to quantify the change and figure out whether their pay is keeping up.  

Wisconsin Watch talked to two experts about how and why to use inflation calculators. Here’s what they told us.

What is inflation and how do we measure it?

Inflation is a measure of how much prices have risen in a given period. Some increase in prices is to be expected — the Federal Reserve aims for 2% inflation when it sets interest rates. When prices rise quickly, consumers and businesses may struggle to buy what they need. 

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases monthly inflation reports showing how prices have changed over the month and the year. The most widely used of those measures is the consumer price index, which shows the change in “prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.” In other words, it’s the weighted average of the change in prices of many of the things American consumers buy. According to the bureau, this rate reflects the spending patterns of more than 90% of the U.S. population. 

The bureau also publishes a variety of more specific inflation rates, including for different geographic areas and for different types of expenditures, including food and beverages, housing and medical care. It also calculates a second version of its national inflation figure, called the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which is based on the spending patterns of households where at least half of the income comes from wage or clerical work. 

Meanwhile, the Fed keeps an eye on a related but different inflation measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, as it’s setting interest rates.

How high is inflation today?

The latest consumer price index numbers, released on July 14, indicate prices rose 3.5% over the last 12 months. The numbers also show prices fell 0.4% in June, when adjusted for seasonal changes. The drop over the month came from falling gas prices, though the average cost of a gallon of gas in the U.S. remains about $1.10 higher than it was before the war in Iran began, according to a price tracker from NBC News.

Inflation today is far lower than in 2022, when it hit 8%, the highest in more than 30 years. But 3.5% is still well above the 2% target, said Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

“Inflation is not as big of a concern in terms of its absolute value as it was maybe four years ago, but it’s higher than we would want, and going forward we certainly don’t want inflation to be running at this pace,” Chinn said. 

Meanwhile, wage growth has slowed, falling behind price growth. Nationally, wages and salaries rose 3.4% between March 2025 and March 2026, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  

“Concern about prices rising is not just prices rising, but it’s against the backdrop of how fast wages are rising. How many people are keeping up, and what components of the population are keeping up?” Chinn said.

The inflation rate may eventually come down, meaning the rate at which prices are rising slows. And some individual prices, including gas prices, could come down too. But prices overall seldom fall. 

“The price level is probably never coming down, unless we have a severe downturn of some sort,” Chinn said.

What are inflation calculators and how do I use one?

Inflation calculators let you enter a dollar value and see how the buying power of that dollar value has changed over time. One easy way to understand this is to think about what a dollar could have bought 50 years ago. Today, that dollar is essentially worth less because you’d need more than a dollar to buy the same goods. An inflation calculator can show you exactly how big the change is: You’d need $5.88 today to buy what a dollar would buy in 1976,  according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator.

For a more practical example, enter your wage or salary at the time of your last raise, indicate the month and year of that raise, then select the latest month for which data is available. That tells you how much that wage or salary is worth in today’s dollars. 

You can also do the calculation backward to see the contrast in a different way. For example, if you earn $50,000 and you last received a raise two years ago, your pay today only goes as far as $47,038.95 at the time of your last raise. In other words, your “real salary” has fallen by 5.9%.

“If your wage is stuck and inflation is going up, your real earnings are going down,” said University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee economics professor John Heywood, who directs the school’s graduate program in human resources and labor relations. 

You can also use these tools to check whether a given price has been rising faster or slower than inflation.  Say your rent was $900 a month in June 2024, and it rose exactly in line with the index for all prices. It would now be $956.65. If it’s risen more than that, it’s outpaced inflation.

Here are links to a few useful inflation calculators:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator: bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
• Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ inflation calculator: minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator 

How can I use the information I get from an inflation calculator?

Inflation calculations can be a helpful tool for workers seeking a raise. Heywood suggests workers seeking raises gather information on both how their real earnings have declined over time and how their earnings compare with those of people in comparable positions in the industry and geographic area, and present that data to their human resources department.

“My impression is that at large corporations and at corporations that sort of follow best practices, they don’t want their workers to be paid less than their rivals or have their earnings go down, because they’re always in a competition for keeping and retaining talent,” Heywood said.

“If you can show, for example, that your wage hasn’t kept up with inflation or with your comparables, then a sensible HR department says, ‘Here’s somebody we might lose,’ and might very well be willing to increase somebody’s hourly or salary rate,” he said. 

If you’re represented by a labor union, your union representatives are likely doing these kinds of calculations regularly.

“It’s part of making sure that their members don’t have their earnings eroded by inflation,” Heywood said. 

To hold workers’ buying power steady, Heywood said, many union contracts include automatic cost of living adjustments. Six months into the contract period, for example, workers’ wages will rise by the same percentage that prices rose during those six months. 

Clauses like those were far more common before the soaring inflation of the 1970s and 1980s, Chinn said, noting that raising wages automatically in response to inflation can sometimes make inflation worse. As economists battled to get prices under control in the 1980s, they became more skeptical of these automatic wage increases.

“It’s good for the workers, it protects their buying power, but that means the cost of making stuff rises … which then feeds into next year’s demands,” Chinn said. Thus even a temporary shock to the economy can last much longer. 

But not raising pay comes at a cost too. “If they don’t get that automatic adjustment, it’s more likely they won’t get to maintain the real wage,” Chinn said.

Automatic cost of living adjustments are still common in some industries. “The auto industry uses it, (along with) aerospace, defense, postal workers, letter carriers, and a lot of local public unions,” Heywood said. “It hasn’t gone away.”

What’s the inflation forecast?

Many economists are predicting 2.5% to 3% inflation over the next year, Chinn said. He thinks those predictions are probably about right. 

“That’s assuming that we’re not having a big resumption of the war with Iran that completely blocks off indefinitely the Strait of Hormuz,” Chinn said. “That assumes no big collapse in the stock market and no big jumps in a trade war going forward.”

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

With prices up, here’s how and why to use an inflation calculator 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.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

For years, the story surrounding American manufacturing was in decline. We heard about factories closing, jobs moving overseas, and communities struggling to replace the industries that once defined them. That narrative is beginning to change.

As executive chairman of QPS Employment Group, an employee-owned staffing and recruiting firm headquartered in Brookfield, I speak every day with manufacturers across Wisconsin and the Midwest. Unlike economists analyzing data after the fact, our recruiters hear what’s happening in real time. We know when production lines are speeding up, when companies are adding shifts, and when employers begin asking for more workers.

Today, the message we’re hearing is encouraging. Manufacturing is making a comeback. A recent Institute for Supply Management report backs up what employers have been telling us for months: U.S. manufacturing has expanded for six consecutive months. While growth moderated slightly in June, factories continue to report healthy levels of new orders and steady production, signs that demand remains resilient despite ongoing economic uncertainty.

That’s especially good news for Wisconsin. Manufacturing has long defined our identity.

From precision machining and industrial equipment to food processing and paper products, our state has built its reputation on making things. These industries don’t just create products; they create careers, support local businesses and strengthen communities.

A busy factory means more truck drivers delivering materials, warehouse employees moving inventory, and electricians, maintenance technicians, welders, engineers, accountants and administrative professionals supporting operations. The ripple effect extends well beyond the factory floor.

Several factors are contributing to today’s momentum. Companies continue investing in domestic production. Businesses learned from recent supply chain disruptions and increasingly recognize the value of producing more goods closer to home. Investments in artificial intelligence, data centers and advanced technologies are fueling demand for equipment, components and industrial products that American manufacturers are well positioned to produce. 

None of this means manufacturing is easy.

Many employers still face rising material costs, interest rate uncertainty and rapidly changing global markets. Labor shortages also remain one of the biggest obstacles to continued growth.

One of today’s biggest challenges is that manufacturing demand continues to grow even as companies struggle to find enough workers. That challenge won’t solve itself.

For decades, we’ve encouraged nearly every young person to pursue a four-year degree while overlooking opportunities in skilled trades and manufacturing.

The reality looks very different today. Modern manufacturing is clean, technology-driven and increasingly sophisticated. Employees operate advanced robotics, program automated equipment, analyze production data and work with technologies transforming the industry. Many of these careers offer competitive wages, excellent benefits and long-term stability without requiring massive student loan debt.

That is a message we need to do a better job of sharing with students, parents and educators alike. Employers share that responsibility.

Successful manufacturers aren’t waiting for talent to walk through the door. They’re investing in training, partnering with technical colleges, offering apprenticeships, improving workplace culture and creating career paths that encourage employees to stay.

Workforce development has become a competitive advantage. Wisconsin has long benefited from its work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit. Those strengths remain just as valuable today as they were generations ago. Sustaining this manufacturing resurgence will require continued investment not only in equipment and facilities but also in people.

That means supporting technical education, expanding apprenticeship opportunities, helping veterans transition into manufacturing careers and creating workforce solutions that allow businesses to fill critical positions. 

Manufacturers remain optimistic. After several years marked by supply chain disruptions, inflation and economic uncertainty, many employers are once again planning for growth rather than simply reacting to challenges. That shift in mindset matters because confidence often drives investment, hiring and long-term expansion.

We see that confidence firsthand. No one can predict exactly what the economy will look like a year from now. Manufacturing has always been cyclical, and challenges will inevitably emerge along the way. Still, the trajectory is moving in the right direction.

Wisconsin has an opportunity to build on that momentum by continuing to support the industries that have long been the backbone of our economy. If we invest in our workforce, embrace innovation and ensure manufacturers have access to the talent they need, this comeback can become sustainable.

It can become the foundation for the next generation of American manufacturing. That’s something worth building.

Scott Mayer is the founder and executive chairman of QPS Employment Group, an employee-owned staffing and recruiting firm headquartered in Brookfield, Wisconsin.

Guest opinion: Manufacturing’s comeback depends on Wisconsin’s workforce 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.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A scam operation targeting Spanish-speaking injured workers is laying traps in Wisconsinites’ email inboxes.

Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development issued an alert this week about a possible “multi-state fraud scheme” that lures targets into fake worker’s compensation hearings to collect fees under false pretenses.

DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy told Wisconsin Watch that 10 Wisconsin workers reported receiving emails instructing them to attend “online workers’ compensation hearing(s)” via video call. The emails’ senders generally use “.org” addresses and bill themselves as government agencies like the “Workers’ Compensation Board.”

Workers who joined the calls via Zoom, WhatsApp, Teams and other video conferencing platforms sat through elaborate staged hearings complete with judges, bailiffs and attorneys, ending in a verdict in the workers’ favor. The fraudsters then told the injured workers that they could collect their compensation payout only after paying a fee to “finalize” the case. In some cases, victims also shared their Social Security numbers.

At least four Wisconsin workers have lost money to the scam since January, McCoy said, paying a combined $30,000 in sham legal fees.

McCoy also emphasized that attorneys involved in Wisconsin worker’s compensation cases must be licensed to practice law in the state. “Any ‘attorney’ not licensed in Wisconsin may be a fraudster,” she wrote in an email on Monday.

The DWD exclusively communicates with injured workers, employers and insurance carriers via mail, and telephone numbers on DWD correspondence will have Wisconsin area codes. 

A June alert from the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau cited other examples of the same fraud scheme targeting injured workers — primarily Spanish speakers — in Illinois, Indiana and Oregon.

Neither the bureau nor Wisconsin’s DWD has determined how the scam’s organizers obtained the email addresses of injured workers. 

People who believe they’ve been victims of identity theft should contact the agency’s Consumer Protection Hotline at 800-422-7128 or DATCPHotline@wisconsin.gov, the agency said.

Scammers target injured Wisconsin workers with fake worker’s compensation hearings 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.