Wisconsin Watch has launched a new, searchable dashboard to track layoffs across the state — the latest release in a broader rollout of news applications, which began this week with a national immigration court data tracker.

The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) maintains a public dataset of layoff notices submitted by employers; our tool aims to make that information more accessible and to highlight statewide or county-level patterns. The tool draws from data dating to 2018 and allows for searches by employer, industry, county and year.

These tools can always be improved, and we welcome questions, suggestions or feedback. If you or your organization find a way to use these tools, please tell us about it.

We’ll release a few more new tools in the coming months, so keep an eye out.

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A new study of Wisconsin data finds what some researchers and policy wonks have long suspected: The $2 billion Work Opportunity Tax Credit doesn’t work. 

Congress created the credit in 1996 as it overhauled the country’s welfare system. It rewards companies for hiring people who often struggle to get jobs, including some people who receive government aid, have disabilities or felony convictions or have been out of work for a long time. Employers can typically claim up to 40% of the wages paid to qualifying workers, with a maximum credit of $2,400. 

The credit subsidizes around 4% of all new hires, according to 2022 federal data cited in the study. Overwhelmingly, they’re low-wage, short-term jobs at large employers, including major retailers and temporary staffing agencies, researchers have found. 

Researchers have wondered for decades whether the credit pays off, but most states don’t offer the kind of records that would answer that question. Wisconsin does. 

Thanks to an unusual collaboration between the state government and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers can track the earnings and employment status of participants in certain social safety net programs. 

In a 2025 working paper, researchers from UW-Madison and the University of Southern California studied two decades of records of Wisconsinites who received food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the most common way an employee qualifies for the tax credit. Researchers compared SNAP recipients who were eligible for the credit with similar recipients who weren’t. 

Their findings were unequivocal. 

“We find that these subsidies do not increase hiring or earnings among eligible groups,” the authors wrote. In fact, they said, their findings rule out even so much as a 0.2 percentage point effect on hiring. 

They estimate 97% of the hiring subsidized by the tax credit would have happened anyway, a phenomenon known as “windfall wastage.” It’s possible, they wrote, that every one of the subsidized jobs falls into that category. 

The companies that take advantage of the credit are disproportionately large. In Wisconsin, they found, half of the subsidies go to just 48 businesses. Nationally, they estimate the credit costs more than $2 billion a year.

“Without reform, the program will continue as a costly transfer to firms with little benefit to the populations it is meant to support,” the researchers wrote.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers wants to increase the credit, which expired in December. 

In November, legislators introduced a bill to extend the credit and expand eligibility to older SNAP recipients and spouses of military service members. The legislation would increase the amount companies can receive and automatically raise the credit amount with inflation. 

In a statement, co-author Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., called the credit “a proven tool” that serves workers and employers. “WOTC is a bipartisan, commonsense approach that every Member of Congress should champion,” Smucker said.

Neither Smucker nor co-author Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., responded to a request for comment. 

Troubleshooting the tax credit

So why doesn’t the Work Opportunity Tax Credit work? The authors think one important reason is that hiring managers often don’t know which job applicants qualify. 

To receive the credit, employers must certify that they knew the applicant was eligible on or before the day they hired the person. Researchers surveyed 170 companies that use the credit. Less than 1 in 5 screened for eligibility on job applications. At companies that do collect this information, it might stay in the human resources office, never reaching the person who decides who to hire.

That may well be intentional, said UW-Madison economist Corina Mommaerts, one of the authors of the study. Federal and state law bars employers from considering certain factors in hiring decisions. That includes age and, in some cases, criminal record. There are ways to screen applicants without violating such laws, Mommaerts said, “but you can see why employers might still be very concerned.”

In addition, she said, some job applicants may hesitate to tell a prospective employer that they’re eligible. People with felony convictions, for example, may prefer not to draw attention to their criminal records. In the last two years, Wisconsin authorities certified the hires of just over 3,000 people with a felony conviction as qualifying for the credit.

“The concern is that there might be this stigmatizing effect,” Mommaerts said, explaining that some employers try to minimize that by asking applicants to review all the WOTC eligibility categories and indicate whether any apply to them. 

Melissa Riccio, director of inclusive hiring at the national re-entry nonprofit Center for Employment Opportunities, is an expert on that stigma. It’s her job to convince employers that hiring a formerly incarcerated person may not be as risky as they imagine.

Asked about the tax credit, she said such policies won’t singlehandedly make the kind of change she’s looking for, in part because many employers may see them as more work than they’re worth.

“You would never hear any of us say that it would be a bad thing,” Riccio said. “But I don’t think that that alone is enough to move the needle in encouraging employers to make a change in their hiring practices.”

Some policy experts say the new study proves that the temporary tax credit shouldn’t come back. 

Until now, there was little evidence on how well the Work Opportunity Tax Credit works, said Jen Doleac, executive vice president of criminal justice at the philanthropy Arnold Ventures, who researches strategies to reduce recidivism and help formerly incarcerated people get jobs. She and former colleague George Callas penned an October op-ed in Tax Notes calling the credit “completely ineffective.” 

“The evidence is clear: The WOTC does not serve its stated purpose and is a waste of taxpayer dollars,” they wrote. “Encouraging the hiring of workers from disadvantaged groups is a worthy goal. We must devote scarce public resources to solutions that actually achieve it.”

Lobbyists hail a proven, bipartisan tool

Initially authorized for just one year, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit has stuck around far longer — in part because of a powerful lobby. Major backers include payroll processing companies, temp agencies and groups representing the hospitality and retail industries. 

In 2022, a variety of industry groups seeking “solutions to the U.S. labor shortage” joined forces to form the Critical Labor Coalition. One of the coalition’s top priorities: lobbying for WOTC. The group spent $60,000 on lobbying last year, according to watchdog Open Secrets.

“Members of the Critical Labor Coalition — representing restaurants, retail, hotel and lodging, construction, food manufacturing, and other sectors — consistently affirm that strengthening and reauthorizing WOTC is essential both to their industries and to addressing the nation’s ongoing labor shortage,” Critical Labor Coalition Executive Director Misty Chally said in an email. 

Asked about the new Wisconsin study, Chally questioned its “narrow” focus on SNAP recipients. She said her group places “greater confidence” in a 2025 study commissioned by multinational talent management company Allegis Group. The authors of that study estimate renewing WOTC would subsidize 131,000 jobs, but they note it’s not clear how many of those jobs would have existed regardless.

“The exact impact of WOTC on net new job creation is uncertain … While some studies find that WOTC leads to meaningful employment gains among eligible groups, a significant share of the cost may stem from subsidizing hires that would have occurred anyway,” Allegis Group wrote. For their analysis, they assume more than 85% of those jobs would have existed without the credit. 

Why has WOTC stuck around?

Sarah Hamersma has been worried about WOTC for more than 20 years.

In the early 2000s, she was an economics graduate student at UW-Madison interested in programs designed to reduce poverty and help people work. She wanted to study the much larger Earned Income Tax Credit. Her adviser suggested she instead examine the smaller, newer and unstudied Work Opportunity Tax Credit. 

At the time, the credit was just 4 years old and limited to people who received cash welfare assistance. She asked state officials for access to the data. What she found matched what Mommaerts and her colleagues found decades later. Unlike the Earned Income Tax Credit, which gives money directly to low-income workers — and which studies show increases employment and boosts incomes — this tax credit seemed to just boost employers’ bottom lines.

“They’re not passing it along to the workers in the form of higher wages. They’re just sort of being like, ‘Awesome, I got more money,’” Hamersma said.

She wanted to do similar analyses on other places, but she couldn’t find any other states willing to share their data. Now an economist at Syracuse University, she researches programs like Medicaid and SNAP.

“I started studying other programs that seem to make more of a difference … but I always come back to this,” Hamersma said.

From time to time, reporters contact her to ask about it. Lawmakers, not so much.

“I still wait for them to someday call me and say, ‘What should we do, Sarah? Should we reauthorize this?’ Congress has never called,” Hamersma said.

She’s sure legislators didn’t read her research. But she hopes they might read the new study, and that it might sway them. 

“They’ve checked every angle you could possibly check, and the program is not working,” Hamersma said, calling it an “ironclad case.”

The new research was enough to convince Elena Spatoulas Patel, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who saw the authors present their findings at a conference. “That really changed my mind about how we think about the credit,” said Patel, who co-authored a December op-ed calling for an end to WOTC. 

But Congress has reauthorized the credit each time it lapsed before, and it will likely do so again this year, Patel said. It’s not just that there’s so much industry power behind the credit (“a classic case of lobbying versus good tax policy”), she said — it’s also that lawmakers like the idea of it. 

“Unless and until something better is offered, it’s probably easier to renew the credit than to let it expire,” Patel said. “But again, it’s sort of ignoring the point, which is that we are spending taxpayer dollars on this by offering this credit, and it really isn’t helping employment.”

Exactly what the alternative might be is “the million-dollar question,” Patel said. Policy experts say options could include supporting evidence-backed job training programs or expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

“If you’re trying to reduce poverty, putting money in the hands of working people is a great way to do it, which is what the Earned Income Tax Credit does … Those low-income working families get more money to spend on the things they need, and we kind of cut out the middleman of the employer altogether,” Hamersma said.

Still, Hamersma doesn’t think Congress will follow her advice anytime soon. 

“This is my cynical take: It’s kind of the perfect program because it benefits corporations, which Republicans historically like, and it seems like it’s supposed to be for poor people, which Democrats historically like,” Hamersma said.

“The facts are kind of irrelevant, the facts where nobody gets helped — it doesn’t quite make it to the top.”

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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Looking for a job can be grueling and frustrating. 

Though Wisconsin’s job market generally favors job hunters, with more openings than unemployed people to fill them, it can be hard to know where you fit in — or simply where to start. 

The state’s Department of Workforce Development runs dozens of job centers across Wisconsin, each staffed with people trained to help you in your quest for work. Wisconsin Watch talked to Jolene Wilkens, an employment and training supervisor at Sheboygan County’s job center, about the services Wisconsin’s job centers provide and how job seekers can take advantage of them. 

“We want to meet the person where they’re at, but we do a lot of cheerleading and bringing that positive attitude,” Wilkens said. “We’re here to support you. We’re not here to make this process more complicated.”

Here’s what to know. 

Find your job center

Wisconsin has job center locations across the state. Find the closest one to you using the map below.

This map doesn’t include all of the department’s affiliate or satellite locations, such as job centers in correctional facilities. 

While the number of people visiting job centers varies widely among the different locations, more people have used their virtual services online in recent years, Wilkens said. The Sheboygan location where Wilkens works typically sees between 60 and 80 visitors each week.

While the department offers many of their resources online, the physical locations remain an important resource for those who lack internet access, need a quiet place to work or need face-to-face assistance for any reason. Getting to know people individually also helps staff make personalized recommendations or watch for jobs that are a good fit for someone, Wilkens said.

“There’s a lot of folks that prefer to come in person and have that personal touch, and some of that is just the support they receive. You build a community,” she said. 

What to bring with you 

Depending on the services you’re looking for, you might need to bring documentation or identification with you. Here’s a list of things visitors often need: 

• Driver’s license or ID. 
• Social Security card or number.
• A list of your last 18 to 24 months of work history, if applicable.
• Your cellphone, to set up two-factor authentications.
• Paper to write down your login information or to take notes.
• A resume, if you have one.
• Direct deposit or checking information.

What to expect when you show up

When you walk into a job center for the first time, you should expect to answer a list of questions from the employees. 

They’ll want to know:

• What work experience do you have? (It’s OK if you don’t have any.) 
• Have you enjoyed that work? What kind of work do you want to be doing? (If you don’t know, they’ll help you figure it out.) 
• Do you like your resume? (If you don’t, they’ll help you change it.)
• Are you having trouble securing job interviews after applying? (They might want to take a look at your resume.)
• Are you securing interviews, but having trouble landing jobs? (They’ll probably want to work on interview skills with you.)

Finding the right fit 

If you’re not yet sure what kind of work you can or want to do, job center staff can help you figure it out.

Staff will recommend taking the Occupational Information Network’s (O*NET) quiz to help understand your interests and the things you enjoy doing. The quiz asks you to rate how much you’d like different activities — such as building kitchen cabinets or teaching a high school class — if they were a part of your job. Your answers help the application suggest careers you might enjoy. 

You can also access the quiz here.

If you know what kind of jobs you want to do, or you want to see different jobs you’re qualified for, staff will recommend using a tool called Skill Explorer. The program asks you to input your job, education or training experience and produces a list of occupations and industries that your skills may transfer to. Skill Explorer also contains information about wages, job openings and projected growth for each occupation. 

You can also access the tool here.

“Sometimes it’s not recognizing all the transferable skills that you already possess and being able to move those industry sectors,” Wilkens said. “Other times, it’s identifying, ‘I like what I do, but it’s not my passion. I want to upskill and go to something else.’”

If you want to return to school or job training to pursue a different career or to move up in your industry, staff will connect you to the Department of Workforce Development’s training arm. From there, career counselors help you track down the right educational program — and assistance affording it.

You can begin browsing training programs here.

Getting the job

After settling on what kind of work you’re after, job center staff will focus on helping you secure the job. 

First: the resume. Most job applications ask for a document summarizing one’s education, work experience and skills. Building one shouldn’t be overwhelming, Wilkens said. 

Job center staff are trained to help people put together resumes that help secure job interviews. They also use a tool that creates a resume after asking you to answer prompts. When users log a job title, it suggests additions based on the profession’s occupational outlook, a federal compilation of data, information and predictions about jobs. 

Wilkens encourages people to be open to changing up their resume or being challenged. 

“You ask 100 people how to do a resume, and you’re going to get 100 different answers,” Wilkens said. “Just because you worked in one industry for 10 years, and then you did a 180 and went into a different industry, and now you’re looking at yet another, doesn’t mean there aren’t skills in there that we can transfer and highlight.”

You can access the department’s resume building tool here. It plans to roll out a new and improved version of the tool in the next year.

Job center staff will help throughout the interview process by scheduling mock interviews and helping you answer practice questions. They can also create an account on InterviewPrep, a tool that allows you to see how you sound responding to interview questions and get feedback from staff. 

Staff can also help you choose between job offers by comparing the wages or cost of living between different locations. 

Other services job centers offer 

Unemployment and job loss resources

People commonly visit job centers to get assistance filing for unemployment. 

“You can’t walk into an unemployment office, so you come into a job center,” Wilkens said. 

Staff also complete an “assessment of needs” when people visit for unemployment help. They ask questions to understand if a person is experiencing housing scarcity, food insecurity or other struggles, so they can direct them to free community resources.

“Somebody will come in feeling really defeated and disheartened about losing their job,” Wilkens said. “We have resources for that. Helping people realize all the things that they brought to the job and why they were able to retain that job for so long, really helps reframe and start thinking and looking at things glass half full.” 

“There are a lot of positives,” she said. “You didn’t just go to work and make widgets … You showed up promptly every day. You worked as part of a team. You were dependable and reliable. You adhered to safety standards.” 

Support for people with disabilities

The state’s job centers have a Division of Vocational Rehabilitation that helps people with disabilities obtain and keep work. 

The division can connect people to diagnosis and treatment, transportation assistance,  interpreter services and help with job search and placement, among other services. 

Job fairs 

Job centers often host or collaborate with local employers on job fairs and hiring events. You can view a list of upcoming hiring events coming up across the state here. 

Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Find her on Instagramand Twitter, or send her an email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

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A proposed constitutional amendment approved last week by the state Legislature to change the cash bail system in Wisconsin for those accused of violent crimes is spawning concerns that it will penalize the poor.

The issue: Will suspects with financial means be released on bail while those with low income accused of the same crimes still languish in jail.

The Wisconsin Assembly approved a constitutional amendment Thursday, to change the cash bail system in Wisconsin by giving judges more flexibility in determining bail amounts for accused violent criminals. Because the state Senate approved the measure days earlier, the fate of the measure will now go before Wisconsin voters during the April 4 election. 

Among others, the proposal troubles Wendel Hruska, executive director of Project RETURN (Returning Ex-incarcerated people To Urban Realities and Neighborhoods), an organization that supports men and women returning to the community from incarceration. He’s had clients who have been detained for not being able to pay bails as minimal as $100. If passed by voters, the constitutional amendment still threatens to penalize those who are poor, Hruska said.

“By passing this legislation, more individuals will be forced to be incarcerated while they wait for their day before the judge,” Hruska said. “This is an overly punitive action that will have an unfair impact on those living in poverty in our community.”

The proposal would allow judges more flexibility in determining higher cash bail. This is being done to “assure the appearance of the accused in court, protect members of the community from serious bodily harm, or prevent the intimidation of witnesses,” according to text from the proposed resolution.

Although judges are free to consider these other factors, they can only use bail as a mechanism to try to ensure an appearance in court.

The proposal would remove that mechanism as the only deciding factor for cash bail and change the language from “serious bodily harm” to “serious harm.” The proposal is co-authored by state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, and state Rep. Cindi Duchow, R-Town of Delafield, and supported by Democratic state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez of Milwaukee.

Unlike many other states, bail bonds, in which an outside agency pledges money or property to ensure a defendant’s presence in court, is prohibited in Wisconsin, though defendants are sometimes released on signature bond without having to hand over money.

Ortiz-Velez said that while some of her colleagues may be unhappy that she’s supporting the proposal, doing nothing about the current cash bail system would be a mistake.

“This is what’s on the table, and it makes sense that a judge looks at someone’s violent past, and these are convictions,” she said. “I think it sends the wrong message when people get out for really violent crimes for $250 bucks and then they get out and put a knife to someone’s back.”

Ortiz-Velez said allowing violent suspects out on minimal bail, which the current system allows, also sends the wrong message to victims.

“Will they call the police again?” said Ortiz-Velez, adding that constituents with whom she’s spoken also support the measure.

Although she has concerns about the amendment, she said the need to protect the public overrides them. She added that the new rules would only pertain to violent crimes.

State Democratic Rep. Evan Goyke of Milwaukee, who is against the measure, agreed that the current system is flawed. But, he said, the proposal is even more flawed because it discriminates against individuals with less income.

Money vs public safety?

“Whenever we rely on money as the way someone is held or let out,” then “it is about access to money and not about public safety,” he said. “I prefer a system that fixes Wisconsin’s pretrial detention system.”

Goyke said protecting the public would be better accomplished by removing the option to post a cash bail if someone is deemed that much of a danger, similar to the federal system.

Supporters of the bill have cited Darrell Brooks, who was sentenced to life in prison in November for the Waukesha Christmas parade attack but was out on bail when he committed that crime. Goyke said there are a number of additional examples of individuals who posted high bail amounts who also committed crimes upon release.

He used the example of Mark Benson, who was released on $500,000 bail while awaiting trial in Waukesha for multiple counts of homicide by negligent use of a vehicle. While out on bail, he was arrested for purchasing prescription drugs via a delivery service while also having several guns and 20,000 rounds of ammunition in his house.

The purchase of prescription drugs from more than one pharmacy and possession of firearms both violated the conditions of his bail. The subsequent crime occurred in 2009.

Goyke also said whether someone is held in jail or released on bail can impact outcomes.

There is ample research to suggest that the outcome for a person who walks into a courtroom in a coat and tie is different than for a person in an orange jump suit, said Goyke, a former public defender. “I can attest to that,” he said.

The ACLU of Wisconsin submitted testimony to the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety and the Assembly Committee on Judiciary in January, citing studies that also showed poorer outcomes for those who are held during pretrial.

“The inability to pay cash bail hurts the very things that help someone charged with an offense succeed: employment, stable housing, and strong family and community connections. On top of the risk of job loss, eviction, and the impact on child custody and parental rights, people incarcerated pre-trial can find themselves under a mountain of system-imposed debt,” read the ACLU’s letter of testimony.

Shanyeill McCloud is the founder of Clean Slate Milwaukee, an organization that provides expungement services for adults convicted of misdemeanors or who have nonviolent felony convictions. She said she sees both sides of the argument.

She knows that dangerous individuals such as Brooks need to be kept off the streets. But, she said, the system being proposed would still lead to unfair treatment of those in poverty.

“It’s always been that way,” she said. “Jail is only for poor people really because when people have the money, they don’t sit in jail.”

The post Advocates worry proposal to change Wisconsin’s cash bail system will penalize the poor appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

As Wisconsin businesses shuttered this spring to slow the spread of COVID-19, jobless filings and phone calls flooded the state Department of Workforce Development — too quickly for staffers to keep up. But DWD Secretary Caleb Frostman remained optimistic.  

In a May 4 email, Frostman told Unemployment Insurance Division Administrator Mark Reihl to “hang in there.” 

“If we can get through May, I think we will be cooking with gas with all the new people on board and call centers up and running,” Frostman wrote.

Three days days later, Frostman emailed Reihl before a meeting with the state’s Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council: “We have a great story to tell of our staff working themselves to the bone on behalf of claimants and we’ve been putting the pieces in place to build that necessary infrastructure to succeed through COVID.”

Staring down nearly 400,000 unprocessed weekly claims just after Memorial Day, Frostman told a state Senate committee that his department expected to work through the backlog by early October. 

Now three weeks into November, a still-raging pandemic is threatening an economic recovery and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has ousted Frostman. Families are still waiting on DWD to process jobless claims filed last spring, with many missing bill payments, racking up credit card debt, facing eviction or worse. 

Among those waiting: 50-year-old Karrie Suhr, who worked at a public pool in Cedarburg and was scheduled to work at Milwaukee’s Summerfest when the pandemic hit. She filed her claim in June and has yet to receive benefits, leaving her with no income throughout the summer. During that limbo she learned the cancer she thought she beat had returned. 

“I had to borrow money from my family just to pay my own health insurance to make sure that I was covered for all these cancer treatments,” Suhr said. “So that’s been very emotional as far as just — I’ve been paying bills all my life and wanting to have good credit … then something like this happens.”

Wisconsin’s unemployment safety net has buckled under a pandemic stress test. More than 1 million filed initial claims since March 15. As of Saturday, nearly 93,000 applications for regular and federal pandemic aid had yet to be processed or adjudicated, department data show.

Thousands more are applying for benefits each day. More than 17,000 initial claims were filed during the first week of November alone.

Ben Jedd, a DWD spokesman, noted that 7.7 million weekly claims have flowed to the department since March 15 — compared to the 7.2 million claims it handled from 2016 to 2019.

“DWD has been dealing with more than four years of work in eight months,” he told TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch.

Wisconsin is not alone in its struggle to distribute jobless aid during the pandemic, but it fares poorer than most states by at least one measure. Wisconsin paid just 42.5% of all initial claims filed between March and Aug. 15 — far below the 56% national average, according to an analysis of federal Department of Labor data by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

Republicans and Democrats have both played roles in Wisconsin’s safety net failures. Party leaders are blaming each other as residents wait. 

“There are people who are talking about suicide. Because they’re just waiting and waiting — because the backlog is so bad,” said Victor Forberger, supervising attorney for the University of Wisconsin’s Unemployment Compensation Appeals Clinic, who has represented dozens of jobless clients during the pandemic. 

“Landlords are falling behind. The whole economy is going into a tailspin, because the department is falling through. And I worry about folks — and what’s going to happen if fundamental change doesn’t happen pretty soon.”

Limiting benefits access

Millions of Americans who have received unemployment insurance benefits during the pandemic can thank Wisconsin, where a couple who met at the University of Wisconsin Law School conceived and helped pass a 1932 Wisconsin law that laid the foundation of the country’s unemployment insurance system. The effort came as union members, employers and reformers living through the Great Depression realized that charity alone could not sustain workers through economic upheaval. 

But the 2020 pandemic struck after Wisconsin and other states spent recent years toughening rules for accessing unemployment benefits — in the name of reducing fraud — and failed to upgrade antiquated computer systems. 

Just 32% of unemployed Wisconsin workers accessed benefits in 2016, down from 50% in 2007, according to a 2017 study by the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for low-wage workers and the unemployed. Nationally, the rate of covered unemployed workers fell from 36% to 27% over the same period.

“The systems in various states were at best neglected and at worst sabotaged,” said Michele Evermore, senior policy analyst with the unemployment law group, adding that Wisconsin’s years-long drop in benefits access was particularly large.

Beginning in 2011, the Legislature under then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, enacted a series of laws that: created a one-week waiting period for benefits (temporarily waived during the pandemic), increased work search requirements for recipients, disqualified people on federal disability from accessing unemployment compensation and increased criminal penalties for making false statements or representations on applications. 

Additionally, Walker signed a lame-duck law just before Evers took office that restricts the governor’s ability to waive certain requirements for state-federal benefits programs including unemployment insurance. The Walker administration also made claims filing more confusing, Forberger said, by removing guidance that helped people navigate the process.

Evermore, who recently joined President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, said many states have overemphasized reducing access to benefits, slowing down claims processing when people are most in need. 

“These systems that have been designed to stop benefits at every corner are now throwing people out left and right,” she said. 

Decades-old technology

Also behind the backlog: DWD’s 1970s-era technology, a vulnerability that lawmakers in both parties have understood for decades but never bothered to fix.

DWD planned a major overhaul of its computer system more than a decade ago, but Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration pulled the plug in 2007 as the project — contracted to two outside companies — fell behind schedule and looked poised to exceed its $24 million budget.

The department’s IT system requires sequential testing and programming, meaning that new benefits programs — such as those adopted by Congress during the pandemic — must be programmed one at a time, delaying claims processing.

 “One of the most glaring lessons learned coming out of the Great Recession — which went unaddressed by previous administrations — was the desperate need to modernize the unemployment insurance base benefits system, yet Wisconsin is still saddled with one of the most antiquated and inflexible systems in the country,” Jedd said.

Evers’ DWD reached out to at least five companies in 2019 to demonstrate replacement software, public records show. Cost estimates ranged in the “tens of millions of dollars,” Jedd said, and DWD was exploring a funding strategy when the pandemic halted its progress.

Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette and co-chair of the Joint Committee on Finance, has criticized Evers’ DWD for not formally seeking funding to overhaul the system in its most recent budget request.  

While the department did not specifically make such a request, Frostman, in a Sept. 15 letter accompanying the budget request, vowed to work with Evers’ office “to develop an appropriate UI modernization funding strategy throughout the budget process.”

Speaking to reporters in late-September, Evers said DWD was still evaluating a technology upgrade. 

“And I am really happy to have Rep. Nygren behind this, because we desperately need it.”

Nygren told TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch that Republicans are open to funding a computer system upgrade, though he would not concede that the department’s failures were rooted in the old technology. Nygren said Evers was raising the issue as a “red herring” to distract from other mismanagement during the pandemic.   

“Let’s move forward. If that’s no longer the problem — if we could check that off the box, let’s identify the other things that are continuing to be a problem,” Nygren said. 

Online headaches 

Meanwhile, DWD’s shift to online-only claims filings have created headaches for some residents, said Forberger, the unemployment lawyer. Beginning in 2017, DWD began requiring most claimants to initially file online and retired an automated phone system for filers. That was after a 2014 audit found that DWD call centers automatically blocked 80% of calls during times of high volume.

Nygren said the focus on online claims “made the system better, and actually helped get more applications through the process in a seamless way.”

But the singular option to file claims online can be a problem in a state where 43% of rural areas lack broadband coverage. 

“You have technological hurdles galore,” Forberger said, which increases the risk of mistakes that lead to denials. “People have to do a lot of stuff on their smartphones. The system isn’t well designed for smartphones.” 

Suhr, the Cedarburg woman, said she is unsure what is holding up her claim, which two adjudicators long ago said was settled. 

In an Oct. 28 interview, she read a message posted to her online claims portal: “One of these decisions requires additional processing by our central office. Processing normally takes less than two weeks. This message will be removed when processing is complete.”  

The message had appeared eight weeks earlier. 

Anatomy of a disaster 

DWD staffers worried about the department’s image and urgently sought to fight through the backlog as the crisis escalated this spring, according to emails Wisconsin Watch obtained through an open records request. 

“Social media is becoming a bigger and bigger problem,” DWD spokesman Ben Jedd wrote to a colleague on March 26, the day after Evers’ Safer at Home order shuttered businesses. “We are getting more and more questions and negative comments on Facebook and Twitter.”

Jedd suggested setting up an email box for people struggling to reach staffers over the phone and designating an expert to answer questions over social media — as many other states had done. 

“People are used to using email and social media to get their questions answered and we may need to reevaluate and modernize some of communications,” he wrote. 

Later that Thursday, Frostman wrote to Reihl, the unemployment insurance chief: “We are getting inundated with press inquiries about the long wait times and we can only keep the negative press at bay for so long.” 

He added: “I know your team is working hard and doing the best they can within the constraints of the current infrastructure, but we have to find a way to get more answers to more people.” 

Frostman wrote that Evers’ team had “voiced their willingness” to shift staff or other resources to the department. 

The administration did not reshuffle employees until May, according to staffing records obtained by TMJ4 News.

Call centers ‘doomed from the start’ 

Wisconsin spent at least $21.2 million through September on contracts to expand DWD call centers and staff for claim adjudication and processing — in some cases forgoing competitive bidding to speed the process, according to department data. The unemployment insurance division also spent nearly $1.2 million in employee overtime, 10 times levels spent in 2019.

DWD initially assigned unemployment insurance experts to answer emails and social media questions, Jedd said. An online chatbot and Frequently Asked Questions posting eventually answered most general questions. Over time, however, email and social media inquiries largely involved individual cases, Jedd said, requiring staff to call claimants and verify their identities before answering questions over email.

Residents — many of whom had never before navigated the unemployment system — overwhelmed DWD phone lines. From mid-March through June, DWD call centers answered just one out of every 200 calls, according to a Legislative Audit Bureau report released in September. About 93% of 41.1 million calls were blocked or prompted busy signals, while frustrated callers abandoned an additional 6.2% of calls.

The call centers were “doomed from the start,” Forberger said. 

“If the whole focus is online claims only, and you’ve made this system incredibly complicated and impossible to use, then of course — people are gonna start calling up, because they don’t understand.”

In a letter responding to the audit, DWD Deputy Secretary Robert Cherry, Jr. wrote that wait times and rate of unsuccessful calls began to plummet in July as the agency expanded call center capacity.

DWD through September spent more than $14.6 million on call center staff from two outside firms: Alorica, a global company, and Milwaukee-based Beyond Vision, a nonprofit that hires people who are blind or visually impaired.

Nearly $12.6 million went to Alorica, which in 2019 shuttered a Green Bay call center and laid off 157 workers while shifting many U.S. positions overseas. The company’s DWD contract called for 500 phone operators. Alorica began answering calls in May but was not fully staffed until July 19, according to the Legislative Audit Bureau.

“After updating our systems and onboarding the additional call center vendor staff, almost all calls have been answered on a daily basis,” Jedd wrote in an email.

Some jobless residents questioned the effectiveness of call centers even when calls reach an operator.

Callers might luck out and get a useful answer, said Chenon Times-Rainwater, a 41-year-old small business owner in West Bend, Wisconsin, who organized a support group for unemployed residents after waiting two months on her claim. “Or you would call, and you would get transferred and transferred and transferred. And it would be a three-hour situation, and you would get nowhere.”

DWD through Wednesday added 681 call center workers, including new hires and shifts between departments and divisions, records show. The department added a smaller number of adjudicators and claims processors who could actually work through glitches: 525.

“Staffing up the call center was an important first step so that claimants were able to ask questions and receive assistance in filing their initial claims,” Jedd said.

Said Times-Rainwater: “It tells me that they spent a lot of money for no progress.”

Frostman ousted

Evers in mid-September asked Frostman to resign as secretary, citing the claims backlog. 

“People across our state are struggling to make ends meet, and it is unacceptable that Wisconsinites continue to wait for the support they need during these challenging times,” he said in a statement at the time. Evers also blamed Republicans for making it “harder for folks to get these benefits.”

Frostman told Wisconsin Watch early this year that he understood frustrations with the department as it worked through obstacles.  

Department of Corrections Deputy Secretary Amy Pechacek has assumed Frostman’s role until a new secretary is appointed. Evers’ office and DWD declined to make Pechacek available for an interview. 

In search of solutions 

A group of Democratic lawmakers in July unveiled legislation to overhaul the state’s unemployment system. The bills would: reverse a ban on benefits for people on federal disability who lose part-time work; permanently eliminate a one-week waiting period for benefits; ease work search requirements; and repeal a Walker-era law that eliminated benefits for workers dismissed for “substantial fault” — a violation less serious than misconduct on the job. 

One of those Democrats, Sen. Chris Larson of Milwaukee, said his colleagues also want to simplify applications to reduce instances of simple mistakes being flagged as fraud.

“We’ve had too many neighbors across the state who had to wait weeks and in some cases months to be able to get assistance,” he said. 

Larson expects to formally introduce legislation in January when lawmakers return to Madison.

The Republican-controlled Legislature has drawn criticism for doing little to address the claims crisis — or the pandemic. It has not passed a bill since a COVID-19 relief package on April 15, making it the least-active full-time legislative body in the country, according to a WisPolitics.com analysis.

“It’s one of those issues that I think they thought that this will just fix itself,” Larson said. “It’s like the ‘check engine’ light that shows up on your car, and you just kind of hope that it’ll just resolve itself.”

Nygren and fellow Republicans argue Democratic proposals to ease restrictions on benefits could open the door for fraud. They have instead unsuccessfully called on Evers to use $40 million in federal pandemic stimulus funds to offer low-interest, forgivable loans to people waiting on jobless benefits. (Loan applicants under the program would not face the type of restrictions that Republicans put in place for unemployment claims to deter fraud.) 

The program would serve only a fraction of those with 93,000 claims still pending or in adjudication, according to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo, depending on the size of individual loans. About 10,800 people could get loans of roughly $3,700, for example, or 30,600 could get about $1,300.

As residents await any substantial fixes to Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance woes, Forberger said DWD should follow the lead of states such as Massachusetts, which in March began holding virtual town halls to explain unemployment insurance bureaucracy. That state delivered benefits to nearly 72% of more than 1 million initial claimants from March to August — a far higher rate than in Wisconsin, according to Century Foundation analysis. 

“Why isn’t the department doing something like that? They have the technology. They made everything online,” he said. “Why can’t they answer people’s questions?” 

In Cedarburg, Suhr now has some income trickling in after starting part-time work at a local school this fall. But it’s not enough to pay the medical bills that began piling up in April as she continues to wait — and hope — for compensation from the state. She expects more folks to feel similar frustration in the coming months. 

 “This isn’t going away,” she said. “COVID is getting worse, and I feel like more and more people are going to probably be applying for unemployment.”

Marty Hobe is an investigative producer for TMJ4 News in Milwaukee. Bram Sable-Smith is WPR’s Mike Simonson Memorial Investigative Fellow embedded in the newsroom of Wisconsin Watch (wisconsinwatch.org), which collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

The post Thousands await jobless aid as Wisconsin leaders blame each other for failure appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Editor’s note: This story updates to correct the spelling of Branden Fitzhugh’s first name.

Editor’s note: This story is part of an occasional series that highlights groups and people worth knowing in Milwaukee. To nominate a person or a group, email info@milwaukeenns.org and put “Spotlight” in the subject line.

Most people would shy away from walking across a roof, but for Branden Fitzhugh, it’s all part of a day’s work.

Since October 2018, Fitzhugh has been working for Arch Electric, which specializes in solar panel installation.

“I could be on the edge of the roof and know I’m not going to fall,” said Fitzhugh, whose job requires him to carry solar panels.

Fitzhugh joined Arch Electric through Mindful Staffing Solutions, an employment agency located at 3227 N. 31st St. Before Mindful, Fitzhugh had been working in home improvement and insulation. He heard about the agency through a friend.  

In August 2018, Fitzhugh began taking classes for construction, which he completed in October.

At Mindful, classes last 10 weeks and start at 7:30 a.m. with an hour of physical endurance. The trainees then spend the rest of the day learning the skills they’ll need to succeed in their future jobs.

‘Something that serves others’

Reggie Reed started Mindful Staffing Solutions three years ago with the goal of connecting people to job opportunities.

“A lot of the world has served itself, and I wanted to create something that serves others,” Reed said.

Reed grew up in 53206 ZIP code, one of the areas in Milwaukee that is challenged by high incarceration, poverty and health concerns.

When he was around 10 years old, Reed realized that the behavior he was being taught wasn’t normal.  

“You were always caught between doing what you need to do and what you should do,” he said.

At 19, he started working as a general laborer. Several years later, he founded his first company. And at 32 years old, he created Mindful Staffing Solutions.

At Mindful, a worker’s performance and attitude are assessed with a point system. The trainees even receive report cards.

A trainee can be dropped because of poor attendance or failed tests.

“Sometimes you got to let [them] go,” Reed said. “You can’t want something more than people want it themselves.”

Reed said he’s trying to turn the workforce into a level playing field.

Mindful trainees are placed in positions at companies or contractors that match their interests and skills. It pays them industry standards for their work, and sometimes a company will hire the person for a permanent position.

Fitzhugh, who plans to be an electrician, said he hopes to stay with Mindful forever. Through Mindful, he’s able to work at Arch Electric as well as additional jobs during the off season. Even though he already had some experience, Mindful made him a better worker, he said.

“You got to start at the bottom and work to the top,” he said.

In the future, Reed hopes to get a bigger facility and start offering more programs in fields such as manufacturing, hospitality and health. In the next 10 to 15 years, the goal is to make Mindful a full-blown tech college.

In the meantime, Reed wants people to realize that Mindful Staffing Solution’s platform, which is based on free education and an unbiased hiring process, can be replicated anywhere in America.

“That’s what this is about,” he said.

The post NNS Spotlight: Reggie Reed wanted to help the community. His solution was an employment agency. appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Taking advantage of a captive audience of 300 business executives, Mayor Tom Barrett urged them to call on their legislators to oppose a provision in the state budget proposal that would end residency requirements for public employees in Milwaukee and other municipalities.

The crowd was gathered at the Pfister Hotel to honor 10 companies and individuals recognized by The Business Journal for their contributions to economic development in the city.

Barrett pointed to the $5 billion drop in the city’s tax base since 2008 and the exodus of public employees in other cities following abolition of residency requirements as the reasons for his stance. The result was “downward pressure” on property values, he said.

“The reason that I’m asking you to do this is because quite honestly many of you probably have supported the governor and the Republican legislators. My request is for you to contact them this week and say, first of all, this does not belong in the budget and, second, this should be an issue of local control.”

Barrett added that Milwaukee has a lot of challenges that the city looks to the state for help on. “But the one thing that I do not look to the state to do is to hurt this city,” he said.

The crowd was gathered at the Pfister Hotel to honor 10 companies and individuals recognized by The Business Journal for their contributions to economic development in the city.

The winners of the annual Central City Business Awards for 2013 in the small business category were GSI General Inc., 2426 N. 1st St., a building restoration and remodeling company and Malone’s Fine Sausage Inc., 300 W. Walnut St.

Medium-sized company awards were presented to Brewery Credit Union, 1351 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr.; Capitol Stampings Corp., 2700 W. North Ave.; La Lune Collection, a rustic furniture designer and manufacturer located at 930 E. Burleigh St.; and Pereles Bros. Inc., a plastic injection molding company, 5840 N. 60^th St.

Time Warner Cable, 1320 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr., won in the large company category.

Individual awards were presented to Lynda Jackson-Conyers, publisher of the Milwaukee Times weekly newspaper serving the African-American community since 1981; Dan Bader president and chief executive officer of the Helen Bader Foundation for its support of the African American Chamber of Commerce; and Maria Monreal-Cameron, founder and executive director of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin for lifetime achievement advocating for the Hispanic community. Monreal-Cameron plans to retire in September after 24 years of service.

The post Barrett seeks support for residency requirements from business execs appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

If all goes well, industrial buildings will begin to emerge in the next few years from the bare ground where the A.O. Smith Milwaukee Works used to stand, south of Capitol Drive and west of Hopkins Street on the city’s northwest side.

The Milwaukee Works employed 7,800 union workers at its peak in the 1970s, making truck and auto parts. It was sold to Tower Automotive in 1997 and closed for good in 2006.

The sprawling factory sat empty until 2012 when most of the buildings were torn down for redevelopment by the city of Milwaukee, which has invested nearly $35 million on the site.

Now comes the hard part: convincing new business enterprises to locate on the 84-acre parcel.

The city hopes to create 700 to 1,000 permanent jobs for Milwaukee residents, especially those who live near the old A.O. Smith factory in minority neighborhoods where the official unemployment rate is roughly 20 percent.

“Now that we have a clear site, we are aggressively developing the location as a business site,” said Benjamin Timm, project manager for the Milwaukee Department of City Development. “We know the business sectors we want to go after. They may or may not be ready to locate here at this time. However, we are exploring all of our options when it comes to creating jobs.”

The city has targeted manufacturers of processed food, machinery, fabricated metal products, computers, electronics, appliances, electrical equipment and medical devices as good candidates to locate in the Century City business park. Some of these companies would require highly skilled technicians but others, particularly food manufacturers, would hire entry-level workers.

This mix of high- and low-skilled employers would be similar to what’s been achieved at the Menomonee Valley Industrial Center, another city redevelopment effort that is close to achieving full occupancy and its employment target of 1,200 jobs.

“I grew up in this area. I know that losing A.O. Smith was really devastating,” said Teig Whaley-Smith, an attorney who represents non-profit developers through his private practice, Community Development Advocates.

According to Whaley-Smith, several factors need to come together before companies are likely to move into the Century City business park. First and foremost, potential occupants of the site must have a business need for a new facility somewhere in the region. That’s a significant issue in an economy that is struggling to recover from the recession of 2007-08. The next question is how Century City stacks up with other potential locations.

On the down side, Century City is remote from downtown. There is no easy access to the interstate highway system. And it’s in a rundown, high-crime urban neighborhood that may not look attractive to the private sector.

On the plus side, the site has rail service that connects to the port of Milwaukee, which in turn gives manufacturers access to global markets. According to project manager Timm, Century City parcels are relatively inexpensive at $55,000 per acre. The site also has high-capacity utility service and storm water drainage systems in place or available without cost to potential buyers. In certain cases the city can offer financial incentives such as tax credits, technical assistance, low-interest loans and grants to sweeten the deal.

If the site must be right for the company, the company in turn must be right for the Century City site plan. The city has ruled out auto dealerships, recycling or salvage operations, and truck freight terminals, among other enterprises, as potential occupants of the site.

Another factor is whether the available workforce is appropriate. Advocates of the project emphasize the need to create good-paying jobs for people who live nearby. Despite widespread poverty and unemployment, they say a pool of skilled workers remains in the neighborhood — people who used to work at companies such as A.O. Smith and Master Lock, and can step into family-supporting, skilled manufacturing jobs if they become available.

A 2011 study by Cross Management Services, Inc., provides at least some support for this claim. It found 25,215 persons of working age in a 6.4 square mile area near Century City. Nearly three-quarters of them had at least a high school education. Of those working, 14 percent were in the manufacturing sector.

Timm said he’s looking for visible evidence of progress at Century City within five years. If the site is filling in with new buildings by then, it would reasonable to conclude that the city’s initiative was successful. Whaley-Smith is optimistic. He said that the success in developing the Menomonee River corridor proves the city has the expertise and commitment to succeed in the challenging, competitive world of urban commercial redevelopment

The post Industrial development key to creating jobs at A.O. Smith site appeared first on Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

South Side community leaders and citizens are riled up over a provision in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget that would end the residency requirement for city workers statewide.

State Rep. JoCasta Zamarippa (D-8^th) and Steve Fendt, executive director of the Southside Organizing Committee (SOC), said ending the residency requirement in Milwaukee not only will affect the quality of services, but will harm the tax base if middle-class city employees move elsewhere.

“It’s economics 101; we want money spent (to pay) city employees to stay in the city,” Fendt said.

Zamarippa said she is upset with the way Walker handled the issue. Including repeal of the residency requirement in the budget bill rather than as a separate item, makes it more likely to pass, Zamarippa said. She noted that it would be difficult to attain Republican support to remove the requirement from the budget.

“It’s always been a stand-alone item and it’s never passed; (Walker) made it a very unfair fight, a political issue,” said Zamarippa.

Walker did not mention the provision ending the residency requirement during his biennial budget speech Feb. 20, but has long been a vocal opponent of the requirement.  The governor has been quoted saying that city employees should not be forced to live in the city.

Fendt argued that city jobs pay good wages and have good pensions, and that if people don’t want to live in the city they don’t have the right to a city job.

“There are plenty of applicants for city jobs; we don’t have to hire people who don’t want to be here,” Fendt said.

Fendt, Zamarippa and other community members attended a press conference at the SOC headquarters, 1300 S. Layton Blvd. in Clarke Square to denounce Walker’s plan. They stated that city workers residing in the city — especially police officers — makes neighborhoods safer, builds trust between law enforcement and the community and improves the quality of services.

“I want people from Milwaukee who know the intricacies of the neighborhood to police Milwaukee,” said David Janis, who moved to the city from the suburbs five years ago. He said he’s proud to live in Milwaukee and feels safer knowing that police are working in their own city.

Fendt said ending the residency requirement undermines Milwaukee and especially older neighborhoods such as those on the south side.

“The fact that they (city workers) keep on asking about leaving is disconcerting; I mean, do you really want to be with us?” Fendt asked.

Fendt noted that he plans to reach out to other local organizations to help fight the measure.

Zamarippa added that she hopes the provision fails in the court of public opinion. Referring to city employees, she said, “We need them here to help us continue to build a solid middle class.”

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