U.S. employers are leaning more and more heavily on adjunct, part-time and contract workers with lower pay and fewer rights. (Getty Images)
When I leave my Boston condo every day, I say good morning to the concierge, who works for a contracting company providing staff to residential buildings. When I conduct an interview in a nearby building, the people who clean that office at night are contractors. The person who serves me my lunch sandwich is a part-timer with no career prospects in that job.
When my best intentions to eat well are for naught and I gorge on Doritos, I remember that the tasters PepsiCo hires to test the chips’ addictiveness are contractors.
These are all examples of what I call “disposable jobs.” People who have them work at an employer’s site, but their employer makes no commitment to them regarding career prospects or job security. My research shows that employers treat more than 1 in 3 U.S. workers as disposable. That comes to just under 57 million full- or part-time workers out of the nation’s workforce of 162 million.
To learn more, I commissioned a nationally representative survey of over 6,000 people in late 2022. I also interviewed nearly 100 workers, employers and policymakers.
I found that there are three categories of disposable workers.
1. Contractors who are employed by a staffing firm but work at a client’s site. Examples include temporary office workers, building cleaners and security guards. Many of these people are poorly paid, but some, such as travel nurses, are highly compensated. My survey shows that these contractors account for 13% of the workforce.
2. Freelancers who work for companies, organizations or agencies without being employees. Examples include Uber and Lyft drivers, food delivery drivers, computer programmers and freelance journalists. In my survey, organizational freelancers represent 5% of the workforce. I don’t include in this category freelancers who work for individual people, such as most dog-walkers and handymen, because my focus is on how employers treat their employees.
3. Marginal workers who are employed by companies, organizations or agencies. They lack career opportunities, and their jobs have high turnover built in. Marginal workers account for 17% of the workforce in my survey.
Marginal work is important due to its magnitude and because although those jobs look standard, they are designed to be disposable.
Who are marginal workers?
Staff attorneys are quintessential marginal employees. They’re hired by law firms as employees, but the central feature of their jobs is that they are not on the promotion ladder to partner. Unlike their career-track counterparts, they have no job security. They are often hired to do the grunt work on a specific case, with the understanding that there is no commitment to keep them on if business lags or the project ends.
Adjunct professors are another good example. This group includes part-timers who teach a small number of courses and full-time contract faculty, but in both cases they lack job security and aren’t on track to obtain permanent, tenured, academic jobs.
In 1970 people with tenure or tenure-track jobs constituted 73% of those teaching at colleges and universities. By 2021 only 32% had that status, and the rest were adjunct instructors or contract faculty.
Part-time marginal workers
Another example of marginal work is part-timers.
Employing part-time workers costs less than having full-timers on the payroll. Part-time jobs pay an hourly wage that is nearly 20% below what workers with full-time jobs earn after age, education, occupation and industry are taken into account. When benefits are considered, the gap rises by another 5%.
A second advantage of part-timers from the employer’s perspective is higher turnover, which provides an easy path to be able to adjust the size of the workforce and which enables them to avoid investing in career development.
When a team of researchers led by professor Susan Lambert interviewed 88 employers that pay low wages, they found that many use part-time work to make their workforces more “flexible.” One manager explained that high churn of part-timers gave the company so much flexibility that they didn’t need temp workers.
“Temp workers: We don’t need them,” he said. “Wait a day for turnover.”
Paul Osterman’s book, ‘Disposable Workers,’ explains how ties between employers and their employees are fraying. Harvard University Press
Evidence that employers try to maximize the number of people working for them part time instead of full time and with benefits arose after the Affordable Care Act fully took effect in 2014.
The ACA requires that employers with 50 or more employees either provide them with health insurance or pay for them to buy it, but only for people who work 30 or more hours a week. Otherwise they pay, as of 2026, a penalty of US$3,340 per uninsured employee.
Another team of researchers compared trends in part-time work in three low-wage industries – retail, hotels and restaurants, before and after the ACA rolled out. They found that the use of part-timers increased by 500,000 in the years after the Affordable Care Act was implemented. This suggests that companies add to their part-time ranks to save on the health insurance costs of standard employment.
Forces behind this trend
Why do employers want many of their workers to be disposable?
A primary motive is to save money. Employing freelancers and contractors means they can avoid mandatory benefits such as Social Security contributions and, for larger employers, contributing to the cost of health insurance.
Marginal workers, to be sure, do receive these benefits. But the high turnover built into their jobs means that their employers can invest less in their training and avoid the management costs otherwise associated with layoff severance and fair treatment on the job.
An additional motive for many employers is a lack of respect for what front-line employees can contribute. A 2023 report from the McKinsey consulting firm illustrated this tendency when it asserted that 5% of employees deliver 95% of “an organization’s value.”
This claim, which I believe is inaccurate, still speaks volumes about the attitude of McKinsey and the firms they interviewed regarding the other 95% of workers. They see those employees as disposable.
Less pay and job satisfaction
My survey showed that contractors, freelancers who work for employers and marginal employees all earn less than regular workers do.
In addition, the survey found that contractors and marginal workers are notably less satisfied with their jobs compared with regular workers, whereas freelancers, due to their ability to choose where and when to work, are more satisfied.
Illustration by Tevy Khou for Capital & Main. Republished by permission.
When Kaiser Permanente triage clinician Harimandir Khalsa began working in the psychiatry department at Kaiser’s Walnut Creek Medical Center in Northern California, she was on a team of nine people. Today, just over three years later, she is one of only three triage clinicians left. Some of the work once handled by employees has shifted to automated and algorithmic tools.
This change has coincided with a sharp increase in the number of patients who are upset by the time they speak to her. On a typical day, as many as a third of her almost two dozen triage calls are with patients who have struggled to access appropriate care.
“What has increased is frustration. Sometimes people are like, ‘I’ve been sent all over the place,’” she said. The decline in triage staffing and the increasing use of artificial intelligence-powered systems at Kaiser have also led to dangerous delays, missed diagnoses and inappropriate treatment decisions, according to multiple Kaiser mental health care workers.
To understand some of the ways that AI is affecting mental health care, Capital & Main spoke with more than a dozen therapists, clinicians, academic experts and advocates in Wisconsin and California, who said the hasty integration of the technology is eroding patients’ access to timely and appropriate mental health care. While AI is changing work in many professions, its use can have particularly high stakes in the mental health field, workers said, by creating barriers to care for patients who are already struggling with major depression, bipolar disorder and other serious conditions.
Increasing transparency around its use and blocking the deployment of AI in triage decisions have become major goals in collective bargaining for these workers. Already something of a national leader in AI regulation, the state of California, where Kaiser is headquartered, now has pending legislation that would create safeguards around the technology in medical settings.
Capital & Main interviewed mental health care workers employed by Kaiser and Rogers Behavioral Health, a Wisconsin-based provider of addiction and mental health treatment. Spokespeople for these health care providers denied that their AI systems are replacing the work of mental health professionals. “Clinical assessments, triage and treatment decisions are made by licensed clinicians, and any technology we use is designed to support — not replace — clinical judgment,” Kathleen Chambers, a Kaiser spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Distressed patients and dangerous delays
About two years ago, Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a Kaiser therapist who works in Oakland, noticed that the path to mental health care was becoming increasingly dictated by technology. Instead of being referred directly by primary care doctors and contacted to schedule appointments, patients were routed through an app, nonclinical call center staff or simply given a phone number to call. “Now the onus is on the patients to be their own care coordinators,” she said.
This dynamic can be particularly challenging for some patients. “Lack of motivation and lack of follow-through are the most common symptoms of depression on the planet,” Marcucci-Morris said. “We wouldn’t tell a paraplegic, ‘Hey, walk down the hall in order to get your wheelchair.’”
Khalsa and Marcucci-Morris are now spending more time doing what is called “service recovery” — the effort to repair trust in patients whose expectations of care haven’t been met. Even when broader use of automated and algorithmic systems does not eliminate human jobs, it can change their nature, increasing the emotional labor needed to reassure patients disserved by those very systems.
“More often than not, I’m de-escalating an upset patient because they were sent down the wrong path and are suffering, so they’re frustrated with us,” Marcucci-Morris said.
Melissa Stevens, a clinical psychologist at Kaiser in Northern California who works in a chronic-pain program, will often make referrals within Kaiser when patients need psychiatric care for intense depression or delusions. Over the past year, however, she said that Kaiser’s reliance on an AI-powered triage system has made those referrals much harder. She sometimes hears from patients who were never contacted or who were placed in group classes for anxiety or depression, even when they needed a higher level of care.
“It’s getting dismissed by whatever their filtering system is until I actually pick up a phone and call a human,” she said, adding, “I’m like, ‘What’s happening here?’”
Such delays can be not only frustrating but also dangerous, said Khalsa. “I’ve definitely seen those cases where there’s been a delay of sometimes weeks with this new triage system or where self-harming or a prior suicide attempt has been missed,” she said.
Kaiser now connects patients with multiple third-party apps and digital programs, such as Calm, which offers guided meditations, and Meru Health, a 12-week mental health program that includes up to four telehealth sessions with a licensed therapist and contains short videos and activities in its app. “Kaiser is saying, ‘Hey, it’s so great; you can just instantly get some cognitive behavioral techniques about sleep,’” Khalsa said. “But what if this person is in the midst of a manic episode, and they’re not sleeping because they’re manic? A little app isn’t going to help.”
While Kaiser workers said these apps and programs can provide valuable information and insights in some cases, they told Capital & Main that in other cases they do little for patients, who get worse without appropriate treatment.
“It’s not weekly therapy, and so I’ve had a lot of patients come back from that, and then three or four weeks in, they’re in worse shape than when they started,” Marcucci-Morris said. “The ones that really trouble me go through the full 12-week program, and then they go to a medical appointment again, and their depression is worse.”
Inappropriate placements
In late 2024, Rogers Behavioral Health, which has facilities in 10 states, announced a partnership with the company Limbic, which offers AI products to help mental health care providers with intakes, case management, clinical assessments and other tasks.
The partnership’s stated goal, according to a Rogers press release, was “to create easier pathways to care for anyone making the courageous decision to seek mental health support”. By August 2025, Limbic published a case study on Rogers’ use of its products, including an AI intake chatbot and an AI voice agent. The report claimed that Limbic used “real-time routing and prioritization based on AI-generated clinical intelligence.”
For Rogers workers interviewed by Capital & Main, the integration of Limbic was not the roaring success that the report suggested. Erin Quinlan, a behavioral specialist at a Rogers facility in Madison, Wisconsin, has noticed many patients placed in an inappropriate level or type of care since Rogers began using Limbic.
A recently admitted patient who was “a very severe suicidal risk” requiring inpatient care was instead admitted into “the lowest level of care” provided in her building: intensive outpatient care, Quinlan said. She estimated that in her behavioral health group classes, which usually have at least eight participants, typically at least one person should not have been placed in the class.
“If a patient does not have the ability to regulate their emotions through skills, they will become overwhelmed incredibly quickly, and we will have them in crisis,” she said, noting that such crises have involved patients crying, screaming and attempting to leave the facility.
In an email to Capital & Main, a Rogers Behavioral Health spokesperson, who asked that their name not be used, credited AI with “allowing our team members to spend more time focused on patient care,” adding that the tool was used to gather information from patients in “a HIPAA-compliant way.” The email also said that “only licensed Rogers clinicians make admission, placement and treatment decisions.” Limbic did not respond to multiple requests for a comment.
Kate Zolandz, a former Rogers therapist, , said she also saw inappropriate placements increase after the introduction of Limbic. Zolandz, who worked for four years in the company’s West Allis, Wisconsin facility, was particularly struck by an apparent lack of screening for past aggressive behavior after the adoption of Limbic. “When they’re crying, they’re dysregulated, they’re screaming, they’re throwing things, it disrupts patient care, but it also stretches staff even thinner because they’re needing to attend to this immediate crisis,” she said.
A way forward: Guardrails and the uniquely human
Some of the problems identified by mental health care workers could in theory be improved with better AI. Yet experts and clinicians caution that some problems are only fixable by ensuring a central place for licensed human caregivers in mental health and other health care. Labor unions and legislators are currently proposing ways to place guardrails around the use of AI in union contracts and state law.
“Ultimately, AI tools are just that: They’re tools. The provider is the trained licensed professional, and so their judgment is what’s important,” said Leanna Fortunato, a clinical psychologist and the director of digital health and innovation at the American Psychological Association.
A key provision of California Assembly Bill 2575, authored by Assemblymember Liz Ortega, seeks to defend the judgment of professionals by protecting health care workers from retaliation if they override the recommendation made by AI. The bill would also require health care facilities to be more transparent with workers about the risks and uses of AI systems and would shift liability to AI developers and facilities for any harm to patients. The bill passed the Assembly by a wide margin and has since advanced through several Senate committees, where it awaits a floor vote.
The California Hospital Association and Kaiser are among the signatories to a March letter opposing the bill. David Simon, senior vice president of communications at the California Hospital Association, wrote to Capital & Main, “At the heart of our concern is that this bill would undermine the many ways that AI utilized by clinicians through clinical decision support systems can improve nearly every aspect of health care — from quality, patient experience and affordability to clinician efficiency and well-being.”
Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of the 2026 book A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, was also critical of the bill. “We need some room for safe experimentation with oversight, as opposed to locking in the status quo,” he said.
Ortega told Capital & Main she recognizes the importance of AI in improving health care and credited it with “saving lives and being able to identify serious health conditions.” However, she said, AI “can also get it wrong” and that patients and workers deserve protection and transparency from health care providers. Another pending bill, AB 1979, authored by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, would outlaw clinical decisions based solely on AI output and strengthen data privacy protections. The National Union of Healthcare Workers, National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association support both bills. (Disclosure: NUHW and CNA are financial supporters of Capital & Main.)
In Northern California, Kaiser health care workers have made the appropriate deployment of AI a major issue in contract talks. However, Kaiser is currently refusing to agree to language stating that artificial intelligence “is not to replace but to assist” employees “in providing safe therapeutic and effective patient care and support,” according to NUHW.
Chambers, the Kaiser spokesperson, did not respond to a question about the proposed language but said in a statement to Capital & Main: “As part of our ongoing negotiations with NUHW, our proposals are focused on ensuring our members have timely access to high-quality mental health care, supporting our clinicians in delivering excellent care and meeting the growing demand for services.”
The roughly 2,400 Kaiser mental health care workers in Northern California represented by the NUHW have been without a contract since last September, and the health care giant’s hospital system’s use of AI has emerged as a major source of disagreement.
That disagreement also prompted the NUHW to file a complaint with California’s Department of Managed Health Care in April last year, alleging that Kaiser uses AI to triage patients in violation of California law. The union also filed a second complaint on July 2o, alleging that Kaiser’s web-based “e-visit” tool also violates state law. In written materials quoted by NUHW, Kaiser said its intake system uses “built-in logic and algorithm” to identify a patient’s level of distress before directing call-center agents to schedule care.
The union is arguing that triage must legally be performed by licensed clinicians, a view shared by Robin Feldman, a professor of law at UC Law San Francisco and the director of its Center for Innovation. “California law requires that a licensed health care professional must make the decision about the level of care a particular patient needs,” Feldman wrote in an email.
In February, Kaiser reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor to pay more than $28 million to its patients who had to go out of network for mental health care between 2021 and 2024. The settlement announcement said that Kaiser “used patient responses to questionnaires to improperly prevent patients from receiving care.” Chambers said that this matter did not involve AI.
Kaiser has claimed that a shortage of mental health care workers was partly responsible for its struggles to provide adequate care. Some of its workers cite Kaiser’s roughly $67 billion in unrestricted cash reserves to question that claim.
Meanwhile, in West Allis, Wisconsin, Rogers’ mental health care workers voted 54-4 to join the NUHW in April, but Rogers has not yet agreed to meet with them and negotiate. Transparency on exactly how AI is used was a key issue identified by several workers who spoke with Capital & Main.
Even with better AI systems and more transparency on how they are used, therapists at Kaiser and Rogers stressed that such tools cannot produce the same benefits as a strong relationship with a human caregiver.
“Therapy works because you build a relationship with your therapist,” said Zolandz, the former therapist at Rogers. “AI can’t build that connection in the same way that an actual human being can.”
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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.
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.
A screenshot of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator shows how far pay goes for someone who makes $50,000 and last received a raise in 2024. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
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:
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.
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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 reportbacks 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 commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
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.
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An undocumented construction worker was paralyzed after falling through a roof in Madison in 2023 while working for contractors that lacked Wisconsin worker’s compensation insurance. He waited for months in a hospital while attorneys and state investigators determined who would be held responsible — a common consequence of informal employment arrangements.
Wisconsin’s Uninsured Employers Fund ultimately covered the worker’s nearly $1 million claim, including medical care, disability compensation and transportation back to Nicaragua. The fund exists for crises like his, but it does not solve the underlying problem.
Construction companies account for a disproportionate share of uninsured employer cases, and many businesses dissolve or disappear before regulators can recover costs. Undocumented workers paid in cash often struggle to prove they were employed, making it difficult to access benefits after serious injuries.
The worker’s injury was never investigated by OSHA. State worker’s compensation systems and federal workplace safety investigators rarely coordinate. Advocates say limited reporting requirements, staffing shortages and poor coordination allow many serious workplace injuries to escape regulatory scrutiny.
Juan can no longer walk. A fall through a Madison auto repair shop roof in 2023 paralyzed him from the neck down.
Juan spent two lonely years in Wisconsin health care facilities while his attorneys and state regulators worked out how to cover his medical bills and compensate him for the abrupt end of his working life.
Like many undocumented immigrants working in construction, Juan found the job repairing a sheet-metal roof in Madison through a blurry relationship between a labor recruiter and a general contractor. Neither had the worker’s compensation insurance state law requires.
The Department of Workforce Development (DWD) investigates thousands of employers each year for potentially violating those requirements. In 2024 alone, investigators issued more than 4,400 penalties totaling $8.7 million against employers for operating without insurance. The penalties flow into Wisconsin’s Uninsured Employers Fund, which compensates injured workers while the state attempts to recoup costs from their employer.
But even identifying his employer after his injury proved difficult, Juan said. Wisconsin Watch is using only part of his name to protect his identity.
While he eventually received compensation, Juan considers his lengthy hospitalization a cautionary tale both for regulators and for fellow immigrants afraid to ask who cuts their checks for fear of losing work. “Sometimes people just work and work without asking questions,” he said, “and that’s what happened to me.”
Meanwhile, disconnects between worker’s compensation systems and federal workplace safety investigators can shield dangerous conditions from scrutiny, leaving more workers at risk of life-altering injuries.
Many fled after police responded violently to widespread protests against President Daniel Ortega’s totalitarian regime. Juan said he headed north to support his family back home.
He waded across the Rio Grande to Eagle Pass, Texas, on an early morning in December 2022.
After a brief encounter with U.S. Border Patrol officers, Juan joined a nephew in Florida. Eager to work and constrained by his lack of work authorization, Juan fit the target demographic for labor recruiters connecting employers in agriculture, construction and food processing with Florida’s then-booming population of newly arrived undocumented immigrants.
A recruiter named Angel connected Juan with his first gig: renovating his nephew’s apartment complex. One job led to another, and he soon found himself crisscrossing the Midwest as an itinerant construction worker.
“One week we’d go to one place in Wisconsin; the next week we’d be in another,” he said.
The work itself was a blur. “Sometimes we’d work up to 13 hours,” he recalled — usually at an unrelenting pace. Wary of asking questions that could cost him a job, Juan said he never fully knew who called the shots. “That’s the problem,” he said. “You start working and you don’t investigate who owns the company…. Sometimes they don’t think it’s good to investigate.”
Juan still didn’t know his employer’s identity when he climbed onto the auto repair shop’s roof on a cloudy Friday in August. The site supervisor hadn’t provided him with a safety harness, he added, so nothing broke his fall when he accidentally stepped through a sheet of insulation.
He fractured his spine upon impact with the concrete floor below.
Juan struggled to remain conscious as the site supervisor debated whether to call an ambulance. “It seemed like he was scared,” he recalled. “Afraid they would cause trouble for him because I had fallen. I kept telling him, ‘Call someone! Call someone! I’m dying!’”
Who pays when a worker is hurt?
Confined to a trauma unit bed at University Hospital in Madison, Juan was in a bind.
Among other looming questions, “there was some doubt about who was going to cover the medical bills,” said Gabriel Manzano, an attorney who represented Juan.
Aaron Halstead, also on Juan’s legal team, estimates that roughly three-quarters of Uninsured Employers Fund claims he pursued over his three-decade career involved undocumented workers. Spanish-speaking worker’s compensation attorneys are few and far between in Wisconsin, and undocumented workers are overrepresented in injury-prone trades.
The types of opaque employment arrangements that left Juan in limbo are especially common among undocumented immigrants, Halstead said.
“They get paid in cash by some guy they may or may not know,” he added, and when disaster strikes, they’re left without an easy way to prove the identity of their employer.
The state denies a claim if a worker or attorneys cannot gather sufficient evidence to identify an employer, said Jim O’Malley, who directs the legal services for DWD’s worker’s compensation division.
“They need to be able to give us something that establishes a relationship (with an employer),” added Aaron Galarowicz, chief of DWD’s uninsured employers fund unit. “Pay stubs are easy,” he said, “but when they’re paid in cash… that’s a little bit more difficult.”
Tracking down the responsible employer requires a degree of “amateur detective” work, he added. Text messages, worksite photos and cellphone location history can all help solve the mystery, Halstead said — or at least create a clear enough picture to bring a claim to DWD.
Leads in Juan’s case pointed to two possible employers: Luis Villafuerte, the subcontractor who brought Juan to Madison, and RestoreMasters, a then-Florida-based contractor in charge of the roof repair.
Neither had worker’s compensation insurance in Wisconsin. Employers sometimes forgo insurance to cut costs, Halstead said. “Some percentage of them end up with injured workers,” he added, “and they hope that no one’s going to do anything about it.”
RestoreMasters, which did not respond to requests for comment, carried insurance elsewhere but failed to get a Wisconsin endorsement on its policy before taking the Madison job, Halstead said.
Not all states offer a fallback. Had he been injured while working for an uninsured contractor while living in Florida, for example, Juan’s only path to compensation would require filing a lawsuit against his employer.
In Wisconsin, however, DWD’s Uninsured Employers Fund could step into the gap as investigators sorted out which contractor to hold accountable.
A million-dollar claim
Passing interactions with fellow Spanish-speaking patients provided Juan moments of comfort during his initial hospital stay. Those connections dried up once he transferred to a medical rehabilitation facility. He had no family or close friends in the area. “I felt alone,” he recalled. “I felt devastated … to not be able to see anyone.”
State investigators reached a decision in February 2024. RestoreMasters was his employer at the time of his injury, DWD determined, so it bore responsibility for failing to secure a worker’s compensation insurance policy in Wisconsin.
By the time the state secured an agreement with RestoreMasters to cover his ballooning medical bills, Juan had another request: a flight back to Nicaragua. With nobody in the U.S. to care for him, returning was his only viable option.
The final payout, including all medical costs, compensation for Juan’s injuries and a chartered flight to Managua, reached nearly $1 million. Only one other uninsured employer — a now-dissolved trucking company in Oshkosh — paid a larger sum to the Uninsured Employers Fund in the past two decades.
Construction dominates uninsured employer cases
Construction firms like RestoreMasters made up a disproportionate share of the uninsured employers that settled with DWD. Roughly one in four businesses that settled with the Uninsured Employers Fund between 2013 and 2023 offered construction or remodeling services. By comparison, the construction industry accounted for one in 14 worker’s compensation claims filed in Wisconsin during the same period, according to DWD data.
But RestoreMasters, a business with a portfolio spanning half the country, wasn’t a typical uninsured employer. “Employers with Uninsured Employers Fund claims tend to be less established than other businesses,” DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy wrote — and difficult to track.
A quarter of the roughly 150 employers that faced Uninsured Employers Fund claims between 2020 and 2025 have since dissolved, Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions records show. Some may have reincorporated under a different name. State records list another 20% as “delinquent,” having failed to file required reports or pay state taxes.
Less than half of employers still incorporated in Wisconsin with names matching Uninsured Employers Fund records have obtained worker’s compensation policies since encountering DWD.
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development building is shown in downtown Madison, Wis. (Steven Potter / WPR)
Of the more than two dozen businesses Wisconsin Watch contacted about their experiences navigating Uninsured Employers Fund claims, only one responded: a used car dealership on Milwaukee’s South Side owned by former Greenfield alderwoman Linda Lubotsky.
Her business is among those that have not obtained insurance policies; Lubotsky told Wisconsin Watch that she now runs a one-person operation that isn’t subject to Wisconsin’s worker’s compensation insurance requirement.
Lubotsky called her business’s run-in with DWD as a “witch hunt,” accusing the former employee who filed a worker’s compensation claim in 2024 of fraud and the agency of failing to act as a neutral arbiter. “I spent $15,000 on attorney fees,” she said, “and I’m currently in the appeal process.”
Employers and employees appealing Uninsured Employers Fund decisions first make their case to an administrative law judge. They can then appeal to Wisconsin’s Labor and Industry Review Commission before taking a case to court.
When serious injury escapes OSHA scrutiny
Even as the state investigated and settled with RestoreMasters, the company faced no scrutiny from federal workplace safety regulators after Juan’s fall.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) serious injury records from 2023 contain no mention of the incident, and the agency’s enforcement data shows no penalties against RestoreMasters for workplace safety rule violations.
Federal rules require employers to report workplace accidents resulting in deaths, overnight hospitalizations or the loss of a body part, and employers that fail to report injuries can face financial penalties.
“OSHA can barely enforce those penalties,” said Debbie Berkowitz, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and a former Obama administration senior policy adviser for OSHA.
Others aware of Juan’s fall could have reported the incident to OSHA. But Wisconsin DWD has “no established reporting process” for sharing information about Uninsured Employers Fund payouts with the federal agency, McCoy wrote.
That disconnect goes both ways. “OSHA doesn’t double-check worker’s (compensation) records,” said Eric Frumin, health and safety director for the Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of national labor unions. The agency’s investigations aren’t primarily driven by workplace injuries, he added, so worker’s compensation data would be “a bit out of their wheelhouse.”
Even in states that enforce workplace safety laws through OSHA-approved programs, including Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota, regulators do not use worker’s compensation records, Frumin said.
But properly reporting injuries to OSHA doesn’t guarantee follow-up investigations, Berkowitz noted. In 2021, for instance, OSHA compliance officers investigated less than 40% of reports of severe workplace injuries.
A long road back
Juan boarded a chartered flight to Managua last fall. The final leg of his return — an eight-hour drive from the capital to his rural hometown — sapped what remained of his energy.
“I arrived home in terrible shape,” he said. “But I made it back.”
He’ll spend the rest of his life in a house he built with the payout from RestoreMasters. “Nothing fancy,” he said — but with a floor plan he can navigate in a wheelchair.
Know your rights
How to research your employer
What is the legal name of the business you work for? Who owns it? Where is it based?
How to check whether your employer has worker’s compensation insurance Wisconsin requires coverage for employers with three or more employees or those that pay $500 or more in wages during a calendar quarter. The same requirements apply to out-of-state employers.
Click here to check whether your employer has a worker’s compensation insurance policy.
What to do if you’re injured at work
Report the injury or suspected work-related illness to your supervisor, human resources department or other designated employer representative.
Get medical treatment as soon as possible. You have the right to choose your own doctor. Get a doctor’s note detailing your work restrictions and give it to your employer.
Click here for more information from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development about worker’s compensation benefits and filing a claim.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Reading Time: 10minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Fidelity bonds protect businesses if an employee steals or commits fraud.
The state issues the bonds, and research shows they’re one of the most effective ways to persuade employers to hire people with criminal records.
But Wisconsin issues few fidelity bonds.
Experts are divided on the issue, with some saying the free insurance can’t hurt and might help.
Others say it doesn’t address all the concerns employers have or educate them about the benefits of giving people with criminal records a second chance.
For every 10 people released from Wisconsin’s prisons, just seven find jobs within two years — even as the state’s ongoing worker shortage leaves many employers scrambling to find the help they need.
The struggle isn’t unique to Wisconsin. Formerly incarcerated people nationwide are far more likely to be unemployed than the general population. One reason: Though people with criminal records often outperform their colleagues, many employers worry they’ll be unreliable or even dangerous.
That’s why, 60 years ago, the U.S. government began insuring employers against that risk, for free.
The Federal Bonding Program, established in 1966, offers “fidelity bonds” to reimburse businesses for losses if the covered employee steals or commits fraud.
Recent research suggests these bonds are one of the most effective ways the government can persuade employers to give jobs to people with criminal records. Those jobs have ripple effects. Families become more financially stable, communities become safer — as people with jobs are less likely to commit new crimes — and taxpayers save money as fewer people return to prison.
So why aren’t Wisconsin employers requesting these bonds? While some states issued hundreds last year, Wisconsin issued just three — even though an estimated 1.4 million Wisconsinites have a criminal record.
Demand in the state is so low that when the federal government in 2019 offered Wisconsin $100,000 to spend on bonds, workforce officials used just $15,000.
To figure out what’s going on, Wisconsin Watch spoke to economists, insurance experts, criminologists and workforce development officials, who ranged from enthusiastic to cynical about bonding.
Some said the coverage limits may be too low to address employers’ worries, or that bonds don’t help when employers are worried about safety or a bad work ethic. Some said employers overestimate the risk of hiring people with criminal records and that education — not insurance — is the solution. But most said offering this free insurance can’t hurt and might help.
In a worker-strapped state, is this insurance program a little-known lifeline or an irrelevant relic?
Bonding basics
Imagine you’re a hiring manager who wants to offer a job to an applicant with a criminal record. If you’re in the same boat as many businesses, your commercial insurance may not cover any theft or other act of dishonesty if the employee in question has a criminal record.
To fill that insurance gap, you contact your state’s bonding coordinator to apply for a six-month, no-deductible fidelity bond that will reimburse you for up to $5,000 in losses. In special circumstances, you can apply for additional coverage of up to $25,000. The state handles the paperwork and the $100 cost.
The program boasts a claim rate of just 1%, meaning businesses in the program seldom report losses. At the end of the six months, you may now be satisfied that your new employee is trustworthy — or you can buy additional coverage.
In Wisconsin, these bonds are the only incentive available to encourage what’s often called “second chance” or “fair chance” hiring.
Formerly incarcerated Wisconsinites more likely to be jobless
About 3 out of 10 people released from Wisconsin prisons in 2023 were not employed within two years.
In comparison, only 3 out of 100 people in Wisconsin’s workforce were unemployed.
Source: Wisconsin Department of Corrections
Formerly incarcerated Wisconsinites more likely to be jobless
About 3 out of 10 people released from Wisconsin prisons in 2023 were not employed within two years.
In comparison, only 3 out of 100 people in Wisconsin’s workforce were unemployed.
Source: Wisconsin Department of Corrections
Formerly incarcerated Wisconsinites more likely to be jobless
About 3 out of 10 people released from Wisconsin prisons in 2023 were not employed within two years.
In comparison, only 3 out of 100 people in Wisconsin’s workforce were unemployed.
Source: Wisconsin Department of Corrections
“It is a unique tool to help a job applicant get and keep a job,” the state’s Department of Workforce Development says on its bonding webpage. “It is like a ‘guarantee’ to the employer that the person hired will be an honest worker.”
The same bonds are also available to other job applicants whose background could make it hard to get or keep a job. That includes people in treatment or recovery for alcohol or drug addictions and people with little or no work history.
In practice, the program is almost exclusively used for people with criminal records, according to program administrator Kevin Kulling.
Wisconsin focuses much of its outreach effort on prisons, making sure people know how to take advantage of the program when they get out. The stakes are high: Of those released in 2023, nearly 1 in 3 were rearrested within a year and 1 in 8 ended up back behind bars.
Recent research backs bonds
Governments have tried a variety of ways to persuade employers to hire people with criminal records.
Nationally, there’s the $2-billion-a-year federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which rewards employers for hiring people with felony convictions. But new research finds the tax credit doesn’t increase pay or hiring for the workers it’s designed to help. It expired in December but could be reinstated.
Meanwhile, a growing number of states have tried to boost job seekers by barring employers from asking about criminal records on job applications. In about a dozen states, public and private employers are subject to such “ban-the-box” measures.
Evidence is mixed. Several studies find these laws reduce hiring for Black and Hispanic men, suggesting that when employers can’t check an applicant’s criminal record, they instead make assumptions based on demographics.
Enter the bond, a policy that predates the others by decades. In 1975, the U.S. Department of Labor commissioned a study of the then-new program. Participating workers reported major salary increases after joining the program, and a majority held on to their bonded job longer than one year.
New evidence supports the program. In a 2023 article, researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research teamed up with an online hiring platform to survey businesses. The platform asked users about their willingness to hire people with criminal records and how that might change if the platform offered wage subsidies or insurance coverage.
Researchers found employer willingness to hire someone with a criminal record rose 12% when offered up to $5,000 in crime and safety insurance. It would take an 80% wage subsidy to get the same result.
Mitchell Hoffman, an economics professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, co-authored that study. He said policymakers have often tried to solve these hiring challenges by trying to change the workers, like with training or therapy. This research suggests it’s possible to change employers’ behavior, too.
That matters, he said, because employers hold the cards. “If firms don’t want to employ people with a record, then it’s hard to move them to employment and to good jobs,” Hoffman said.
The findings are welcome news to Jen Doleac, executive vice president of criminal justice at the philanthropy Arnold Ventures and author of the book “The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice.” Doleac, who researches crime and discrimination, was surprised when she first learned about the Federal Bonding Program.
“It’s such a smart idea. Employers say they’re worried about the risk of hiring someone with a record. How do we deal with risk? We provide insurance,” Doleac said. A critic of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, she said the new research shows why bonds are a better bet.
“Insurance just moved the needle more, and much more dollar for dollar,” Doleac said.
Experts divided
Even in states issuing hundreds of bonds a year, that’s just a fraction of those released from prison annually, and a smaller share of all people with criminal convictions.
“The total number of firms nationally that were involved, it seemed like a very small number,” Hoffman said. “There's interesting variation across states, but overall, just not that much usage.”
Just 27 Wisconsin employers participated in the program in the last five years, according to federal records obtained by Wisconsin Watch. Those businesses range from national retailers like Dollar Tree to smaller agricultural businesses like Rine Ridge Farms.
Why haven’t bonds proven more popular? Wisconsin Watch asked more than a dozen Wisconsin businesses and industry groups about their experience with the Federal Bonding Program. Just one responded, and none agreed to answer questions.
Hoffman thinks maybe employers just aren’t that worried, or that the risk they’re worried about isn’t covered by the bonds. They may worry the applicant will be unreliable or even dangerous, despite evidence to the contrary. In a 2021 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, more than 80% of business leaders said second-chance hires perform the same as or better than other employees.
“If someone does something bad to a customer,” Hoffman said, that customer might sue, or customers might take their business elsewhere. Bonds don’t cover that risk. “That is very difficult to quantify. What is the cost of that sort of event?”
Another possibility, Doleac said, is that employers don’t know about the bonds. Some states may be doing more to get the word out than others, but marketing costs money that state workforce departments may not have.
The more likely explanation, she said, is that the process is too cumbersome for employers who are used to buying insurance that covers all their employees. Although job applicants and employers do not have to complete any paperwork to get a bond, employers still need to keep track of the policies that were issued to a specific employee.
“It’s just too inconvenient and too much paperwork to keep track of,” Doleac said. She and her colleagues are exploring whether standard policies could include riders covering these workers, without a separate process or schedule.
Meanwhile, some advocates for formerly incarcerated people worry that the bonds can backfire, making employers worry even more.
Craig Coleman, a case manager for Forward Service Corporation, helps formerly incarcerated Wisconsinites get trained and find work. He doubts bonds will help them.
“You’re saying to your employer, ‘If I steal from you, then you'll be reimbursed,’” Coleman said. “I’m not an HR person, but if I had someone come in with an insurance policy saying, ‘If I steal from you,’ that’s the end of the conversation. I'm not hiring you.”
There, she trained more than 50 other companies on “fair-chance hiring,” teaching them that hiring people with criminal records isn’t risky. Talking about extra insurance policies undermines that message, she said.
“Rather than hiring the person because they’re the best person for the job, but they happen to have a record. Now we’re trying to say, ‘Here’s an insurance policy. Please do it,’” Martin said.
The fact that Wisconsin employers seldom use fidelity bonds might even be a good sign. The state has unusually strong organizations that prepare applicants for work and match them with employers, said Josh Morby, who represents such groups as spokesperson for the Wisconsin Workforce Hub. If those organizations are doing their jobs well, employers will trust their participants — no insurance policy necessary.
“Wisconsin employers are looking for candidates who are screened, prepared and supported so hiring justice-impacted talent becomes a reliable workforce solution, not a risk,” Morby said in an email.
Wisconsin bond use lags
The bonding program’s popularity varies among states, according to data Wisconsin Watch obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. In 2025, New Jersey issued 277 bonds, and Washington, D.C., issued 192.
Meanwhile, 12 states didn’t issue any in 2025.
Wisconsin Watch requested interviews with workforce officials in New Jersey, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia to learn why employers there are using more bonds. None responded. A U.S. Department of Labor spokesperson also declined an interview.
One possible explanation for the higher numbers is that those states have higher unemployment rates. But Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was at a historic low in 2018, when the state issued 27 bonds, more than 12 times as many as it did in 2025.
In 2019, Wisconsin workforce officials requested the maximum $100,000 federal grant to buy more bonds. They said they planned to buy 1,000 bonds over four years, plus more with other funds. They estimated more than 5,500 Wisconsinites with criminal records were eligible. The bonds, they said, would help break “the cycle of recidivism.”
But the COVID-19 pandemic — which shuttered businesses and locked down prisons — derailed the state’s plans.
“With the unemployment rate at an increased rate in Wisconsin, many recruitment efforts for employers to use Fidelity Bonds (have) slowed,” officials wrote in each quarterly grant report from April 2020 to February 2021.
When the grant period ended in 2023, Wisconsin had issued just 59 bonds. Officials wrote that, despite their outreach efforts, their bond numbers were “extremely low.”
The bond’s popularity has since further waned. In each of the last two years, Wisconsin issued no more than three bonds. Department spokesperson Haley McCoy attributed that to the state’s tight labor market.
“Given the strong demand to fill vacant positions, employers have not needed the added incentive of fidelity bonds to hire justice-involved employees during this historically strong economic period,” McCoy wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
Asked whether the Department of Workforce Development plans to make any changes to Wisconsin’s bonding program, McCoy said the bonds are “just one tool in the toolbox that can help a job seeker secure a job.”
“We’ll continue to work with our partners to provide opportunities and prepare job seekers and workers for their next opportunity in Wisconsin,” McCoy wrote.
From a job market ‘hidden force’ to a lever against bias
Meanwhile, Arnold Ventures researchers are trying to figure out how to get more businesses across the country to use federal fidelity bonds or something similar.
Criminal justice director Carson Whitelemons has been studying ways to improve the federal program. But she said just trying to understand how bonding works and how it fits with existing business policies can be “incredibly difficult.”
“Even for business owners who are trying to ask their insurers what is covered and what is not covered, it's not always clear, and often that realm of uncertainty, I think, is what makes employers cautious,” Whitelemons said.
But it’s not just about bonding. The work is part of a new effort she’s organizing with experts from a variety of fields, trying to understand the biases that can keep people from getting all kinds of coverage and how to fix them.
“(Insurance) is such a powerful lever in terms of what people feel safe or empowered to do, what they feel protected from. This has come up again and again in terms of different issues in the United States, in home ownership and redlining — insurance is often this hidden force, especially in areas where there is stigma or discrimination.”
Hoffman, the HR economist, said if more employers use bonds, that could help dispel misconceptions about people with records.
“Employers … think they’re less productive than they actually are,” Hoffman said. That’s not the problem bonds are designed to solve, but if bonding gets more employers to hire these applicants, the experience may change how they view similar applicants in the future, he said.
Meanwhile, officials from Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections will continue teaching prisoners about these seldom-used bonds and encouraging them to pitch the opportunity to their potential future bosses — for better or worse.
Hongyu Liu is a data investigative reporter for Wisconsin Watch. Email him at hliu@wisconsinwatch.org.
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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