Month: September 2022

Wisconsin is likely headed for a big workforce shortage. Simply put: there aren’t enough young people here to replace the baby boomers who will turn 65 years old over the next decade.

A new study by Forward Analytics, a Wisconsin-based research organization that provides state and local policymakers with nonpartisan analysis of issues affecting the state, shows increased migration may be the only answer to the workforce shortage.

Dale Knapp has followed the trends for almost 25 years, so the stats from his latest analysis on Wisconsin’s workforce weren’t surprising.

“What you’ve got is a bigger baby boom generation than we thought, retiring over the next 10 years, and we don’t have enough young people coming up behind them to replace them,” Knapp, the director of Forward Analytics, said.

Figures from the 2020 census show that if 2010-2020 migration patterns continue, the number of working Wisconsinites will drop about 130,000 by 2030.

Data from federal income tax returns shows a trend from 2012 to 2020, with the state losing 106,000 so-called “families” with the tax filer under age 26.

Often, these are single individuals, which is the group Knapp said he hopes will return to Wisconsin someday.

“If we can get them here, they tend to stay here because they realize we have quality schools, an affordable cost of living, low crime, and we have a lot of great amenities,” Knapp said.

According to the study, Wisconsin could potentially build on those factors to attract those headed into their 30s and 40s, which are the typical family formation years when people want to move back to the Badger State.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index increased in September for the second consecutive month. The Index now stands at 108.0 (1985=100), up from 103.6 in August. The Present Situation Index—based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions—rose to 149.6 from 145.3 last month. The Expectations Index—based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions—increased to 80.3 from 75.8.

“Consumer confidence improved in September for the second consecutive month supported in particular by jobs, wages, and declining gas prices,” said Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “The Present Situation Index rose again, after declining from April through July. The Expectations Index also improved from summer lows, but recession risks nonetheless persist. Concerns about inflation dissipated further in September—prompted largely by declining prices at the gas pump—and are now at their lowest level since the start of the year.”

“Meanwhile, purchasing intentions were mixed, with intentions to buy automobiles and big-ticket appliances up, while home purchasing intentions fell. The latter no doubt reflects rising mortgage rates and a cooling housing market. Looking ahead, the improvement in confidence may bode well for consumer spending in the final months of 2022, but inflation and interest-rate hikes remain strong headwinds to growth in the short term.”

The total value of all property in Wisconsin shot up by 13.8% percent this year, the biggest increase in the nearly 40 years since the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum and its predecessors began tracking the trends.

Using tax levies and rates approved for December 2021 tax bills in every Wisconsin county, city, village and town, along with the updated property values that will be used to calculate those bills, Wisconsin Policy Forum researchers found that gross property tax levies imposed by local governments statewide rose by only 1.6%, an increase far below the current 8.3% inflation rate and lower than the growth seen every year since 2014.

As a result, the state’s property tax rates “continued their long-running decline,” the authors found, with the steepest drop since 2005. In 2021, property owners statewide owed $19.60 for every $1,000 of equalized property value. For 2022, they’ll owe $18.64, or 4.9% less.

Tax levies change as a result of changes made by any of the taxing jurisdictions in a given area, including the county, municipality, school district, technical college district, tax increment finance district, special district, and state, all of which set levies within state-established limits.

Some $45.6 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits may have been fraudulently paid to criminals between March 2020 and April 2022, the US Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General said in a memorandum on Thursday.

Fraud within the nation’s unemployment system skyrocketed after Congress enacted a historic expansion of the program to help Americans deal with the economic upheaval sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. State unemployment agencies were overwhelmed with record numbers of claims and relaxed some requirements in an effort to get the money out the door quickly to those who had lost their jobs. Within five months, more than 57 million people filed claims for unemployment benefits, the inspector general’s office said.

“Hundreds of billions in pandemic funds attracted fraudsters seeking to exploit the UI program — resulting in historic levels of fraud and other improper payments,” Inspector General Larry Turner said in a statement.

Nearly a million Social Security numbers were used by people who filed for benefits in two or more states, resulting in benefits paid from more than one state, the inspector general’s office said. They received nearly $29 billion in potentially fraudulent payments. And 1.7 million Social Security numbers associated with suspicious email addresses were used to file for $16.2 billion in benefits.

The inspector general’s office said that it has had difficulty getting unemployment insurance data from state workforce agencies until subpoenas were issued. In some cases, the data sent was incomplete or unusable.

The inspector general’s office also took issue with the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, which oversees the unemployment insurance program, saying the agency has not implemented the office’s previous recommendations including to collaborate with state agencies to establish effective controls to mitigate fraud and to work with Congress to require state agencies to cross-match high-risk areas.

“ETA’s lack of sufficient action significantly increases the risk of even more UI payments to ineligible claimants,” the inspector general’s office wrote in the memorandum.

The inspector general’s office also announced Thursday that more than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes involving unemployment benefits fraud since March 2020, and there have been more than 400 convictions to date. It has opened more than 190,000 investigations into unemployment benefits fraud, an increase of more than 1,000 times in the volume of the office’s unemployment insurance work.

Yesterday, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) announced the creation of a new, additional area code to overlay the area in which the 608 area code is now in service.

The 608 area code is expected to run out of assignable prefixes (the three numbers in a phone number following the area code) in the first quarter of 2024. The new 353 area code will be used to provide telephone numbers to new customers. All current customers will retain their existing telephone numbers and will continue to dial and receive calls without change.

The Commission approved the petition by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA), the neutral third-party area code relief planner, to overlay a new area code. This decision will provide additional numbering resources to meet the demand for telephone numbers. The new 353 area code will be in service by late 2023.

An area code overlay adds a second area code to the geographic region served by the existing area code. Therefore, multiple area codes co-exist within the same geographic region. Once the 608 area code runs out of assignable prefixes, new customers in southcentral and southwestern Wisconsin may be assigned telephone numbers in the new 353 area code. Customers will continue to dial the three-digit area code for all calls to and from telephone numbers with the 608 and 353 area codes. The price of a call will not change due to the overlay. Customers can still dial just three digits to reach 911, as well as 211, 311, 411, 511, 611, 711, 811, and 988, the new Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

The plan filed by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator can be found here: PSC REF#: 440694

Americans owed a stunning $887 billion in credit card debt as of June 2022, according to recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That was an increase of about 5.5% from the first quarter of the year, and a 13% increase from the year-ago period.

“Americans are borrowing more, but a big part of the increased borrowing is attributable to higher prices,” researchers for the New York Fed said in a news release.

Still, despite the heavier use of credit cards and debt, the New York Fed noted that delinquency rates remain relatively low.

The numbers come against the backdrop of stubbornly high inflation that has shown little sign of cooling off: New data released last week by the Labor Department showed the consumer price index unexpectedly climbed 0.1% in August, dashing hopes for an inflation slowdown. On an annual basis, inflation soared 8.3%, hovering near the fastest pace since 1981.

President Biden has issued nearly 100 executive orders, which will cost taxpayers up to $1.5 trillion, as the national debt nears $31 trillion, according to an expert.

“President Biden’s executive actions have cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion so far,” according to the Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Dickerson.

“But earlier this year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office produced an analysis showing that less than ten of President Biden’s earlier executive actions cost taxpayers already more than $500 billion,” Dickerson said.

“So it could be up to $1.5 trillion in cost to taxpayers just on executive actions, not legislation going through Congress and being signed into law and being debated,” Dickerson added. “It’s just pure executive actions taken by President Biden costing taxpayers up to $1.5 trillion.”

To strengthen enforcement and improve compliance with workplace safety standards and reduce worker injuries and illnesses, the U.S. Department of Labor is expanding the criteria for placement in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Severe Violator Enforcement Program.

The new criteria include violations of all hazards and OSHA standards and will continue to focus on repeat offenders in all industries. Previously, an employer could be in the program for failing to meet a limited number of standards. The changes will broaden the program’s scope with the possibility that additional industries will fall within its parameters.

Since 2010, the Severe Violator Enforcement Program has focused on enforcement and inspection resources on employers who either willfully or repeatedly violate federal health and safety laws or demonstrate a refusal to correct previous violations. In addition to being included on a public list of the nation’s severe violators, employers are subject to follow-up inspections.

Specifically, the updated criteria include the following:

• Program placement for employers with citations for at least two willful or repeated violations or who receive failure-to-abate notices based on the presence of high-gravity serious violations.
• Follow-up or referral inspections made one year – but not longer than two years – after the final order.
• Potential removal from the Severe Violator Enforcement Program three years after the date of receiving verification that the employer has abated all program-related hazards. In the past, removal could occur three years after the final order date.
• Employers’ ability to reduce time spent in the program to two years, if they consent to an enhanced settlement agreement that includes use of a safety and health management system with seven basic elements in OSHA’s Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs.

The updated program instruction replaces the 2010 instruction, and remains in effect until canceled or superseded.

President Joe Biden’s administration secured a tentative deal on Thursday to avert a railway strike that could have wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy, but union members angered by tough work conditions have yet to ratify the agreement.

Workers have gone three years without a raise amid the contract dispute, with talks stalling over attendance, sick time and scheduling issues. Only two of 12 unions – representing less than 10% of the workforce – are known to have ratified new contracts with freight railways.

The unions, including two large groups representing around 60,000 workers, will need to persuade their members to vote for Thursday’s deal. That might be a tough sell, labor experts warned.

“There’s a lot of anger among the members of these two unions because they feel, after being essential workers during the COVID pandemic, they were getting screwed on the attendance policy and getting punished for taking sick leave,” said Seth Harris, a professor of Northeastern University and former Biden administration official focused on labor and the economy.

Retail sales, a measure of how much consumers spent on a number of everyday goods, including cars, food and gasoline, rose 0.3% in August, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

That is an improvement from the downwardly revised data in July, which showed that retail sales actually tumbled 0.4%.

The August advance is not adjusted for inflation – which rose 0.1% last month – meaning that consumers may be spending the same but getting less bang for their buck.

“Consumer spending has flatlined in real terms in the face of steep inflation and interest rate increases from the Fed,” said Ben Ayers, a senior economist at Nationwide. “While retail sales continue to move higher, much of this is due to higher prices which push up the dollar volume of sales. This is another indication of the general slowdown in activity across the economy this year.”