News of the Day

Republicans emerged from Tuesday’s elections still in complete control of the Wisconsin Legislature, overcoming new district boundaries that Democrats had hoped would give them a chance at finally making major inroads in both chambers.

As of early Wednesday morning, the GOP had held six of 10 Republican Senate districts up this cycle, ensuring themselves of at least an 18-seat majority. Democrats managed to flip one district, ending the GOP’s 22-seat supermajority and preventing Republicans from overriding any vetoes from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

Democrats had better luck in the Assembly, flipping a handful of districts, but it wasn’t enough. As of early Wednesday morning Republicans had still amassed at least 50 seats, guaranteeing them control.

The GOP has controlled both chambers for most of the last 13 years. They’ve used their majorities to neuter public employee unions, legalize concealed weapons, scale back diversity initiatives and tighten voting rules.

Democrats had hoped this election cycle would be different after liberal justices took control of the state Supreme Court in 2023, clearing the way for Evers to draw new district boundaries that spread out Republican voters.

Boeing machinists approved a new labor deal Monday, ending a costly seven-week strike that halted most of the company’s aircraft production.

Machinists voted 59% in favor of the new contract, which includes 38% wage increases over four years and other improvements.

Boeing said machinist pay will average $119,309 at the end of this contract proposal. The first wage rise will be 13%. The contract also increases 401(k) contributions and a signing bonus of up to $12,000 or a combination of a $7,000 bonus and $5,000 401(k) deposit.

Boeing will now be able to resume production, key to its recovery since the bulk of the aircraft price is paid when they are handed over to customers. But getting up to target production rates, particularly for the 737 Max, Boeing’s cash cow, will take time.

“While the strike ending and workers returning to the shopfloor is a meaningful step in the right direction, ramping back up will take time,” said Bank of America aerospace analyst Ron Epstein. He said some workers will need to be retrained.

The machinists, who build planes such as the bestselling 737 Max, 777 and 767 aircraft must return to their jobs no later than November 12 the union said. They could return as early as Wednesday.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS)  on Friday announced that it increased the amount that individuals can contribute to their 401(k) and other retirement plans to account for inflation.

Each year, the IRS reviews tax thresholds and limitations for various retirement accounts and considers making a cost-of-living adjustment based on the impact of inflation since the previous change occurred.

For the 2025 tax year, the IRS is increasing the annual contribution limit for 401(k) plans by $500 from the current limit of $23,000 in 2024 to $23,500 in 2025.

Those limits also apply to several other retirement plans and will undergo the same increase for the 2025 tax year, including 403(b) retirement plans, governmental 457 plans and the federal government’s Thrift Savings Plan.

The IRS also considers adjustments to the contribution limits for Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), including traditional and Roth IRAs. However, the IRS will hold the IRA annual contribution limits constant from 2024 to 2025 at $7,000. It’s also maintaining the IRA catch-up contribution limit for individuals aged 50 and over at $1,000 for 2025.

The catch-up contribution limit that applies to employees aged 50 and up enrolled in most 401(k), 403(b), governmental 457 plans and the Thrift Savings Plan remain at $7,500 for 2025. Workers who are 50 and older can generally contribute up to $31,000 annually to those retirement plans starting in 2025 under changes made with the enactment of the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022.

For individual taxpayers who are also covered by a workplace retirement plan, the traditional IRA contribution tax deduction phase-out range is being increased to between $79,000 and $89,000 — up from $77,000 and $87,000. For married couples filing joint tax returns, the phase-out range rises to between $126,000 and $146,000, an increase of $3,000 from last year.

The income phase-out range for taxpayers who are contributing to a Roth IRA increased to between $150,000 and $165,000 for individuals and heads of households — up from between $146,000 and $161,000. For married couples filing jointly, the phase-out range rises by $6,000 to between $236,000 and $246,000.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 12,000 for the month, down sharply from September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. In what had already been expected to be a downbeat report, October posted the smallest gain since December 2020.

The unemployment rate, however, held at 4.1%, in line with expectations. A broader measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons also was unchanged at 7.7%.

In the report narrative, the BLS noted that the Boeing strike likely subtracted 44,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector, which lost 46,000 positions overall.

Health care and government again led job creation, respectively adding 52,000 and 40,000 positions. Several sectors, though, saw job losses.

In addition to the expected pullback in manufacturing, temporary help services saw a drop of 49,000. The category is sometimes seen as a proxy for underlying job strength and has seen a decline of 577,000 since March 2022, the BLS said.

Another leading sector, leisure and hospitality, saw a drop of 4,000, while retail trade and transportation and warehousing also reported modest declines.

Yesterday, the Wisconsin Hospital Association Information Center (WHAIC) released its annual Guide to Wisconsin Hospitals for FY2023, which shows Wisconsin hospitals and health systems are continuing to experience financial pressures, compounded by challenges from the previous year. The report indicates a sustained period of low margins and ongoing financial challenges.

Key Findings
Between FY2021 and FY2023, hospitals experienced a 40.8% decrease in their operating margins, with 82 out of 167 hospitals reporting a decline. Fifty-five hospitals—approximately 33% of all hospitals in the state—are now operating at a loss. Health systems also reported a 117.8% decrease in operating margins, reaching -0.8% in FY2023.

Safety net hospitals, which serve populations with higher Medicaid coverage, are also reporting losses. In FY2023, 38.1% of Wisconsin’s safety net hospitals—32 out of 84 such facilities—reported financial losses, up from 33.7% in the previous year.

Additionally, hospitals are dealing with rising costs. Supply and service costs have increased by 16.6% since FY2021, while salary and fringe expenses have increased by 11.3%, largely due to workforce shortages.

Emergency department utilization has also increased, with nearly 2.4 million visits in FY2023, a 13.5% increase from FY2021.

Gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced during the three-month period from July through September, increased at a 2.8% annualized rate, according to a Commerce Department report Wednesday that is adjusted for inflation and seasonality.

Personal consumption expenditures, the proxy for consumer activity, increased 3.7% for the quarter, the strongest performance since Q1 of 2023. Another major factor the department cited for growth was federal government spending, which exploded higher by 9.7%, pushed by a 14.9% surge in defense outlays.

However, an 11.2% jump in imports, which subtract from GDP, held back the growth number and offset an 8.9% gain in exports.

The report confirms that the U.S. expansion has continued despite elevated interest rates and long-standing worries that the burst of fiscal and monetary stimulus that carried the economy through the Covid crisis wouldn’t be enough to sustain growth.

However, resilient consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of all activity, has helped keep the economy moving, as has a relentless wave of government spending that pushed the budget deficit to more than $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2024.

The number of annual union petitions in the state has more than doubled in recent years, suggesting interest in unionization is on the rise even as the share of Wisconsin workers in unions has fallen substantially.

Wisconsin had a total of 47 union petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board in fiscal year 2024, which ran from Oct. 1, 2023 to Sept. 30, 2024. That marked a 114% increase since fiscal year 2021, when 22 petitions were filed. That number was 28 for fiscal year 2022 and 25 for fiscal year 2023.

The increase in Wisconsin is part of a regional trend, the NLRB figures show. Midwest states had a 138% increase in union petitions over the same period, which is the highest percentage increase of any region in the country.

By percentage, Wisconsin is on the low end for these increases: Ohio had a 226% increase; Indiana had a 187% increase; Michigan saw a 160% increase; and Minnesota had a 124% increase. Among nearby states, only Illinois had a smaller percentage change with 95%.

Filing a union petition with the NLRB is just the first step toward unionizing, and the process of moving from an election to signing a contract with an employer often results in “a pretty substantial waiting game,” Dresser said. Despite the interest indicated by the rise in petitions, she noted the share of unionized workers in the workforce has actually been declining.

Between 2000 and 2021, the percentage of employed Wisconsinites in unions plummeted from 17.8% to 7.9%, putting the state below the national average of 10.3% for the year. That’s according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum report from 2022 documenting the decline of unions in the state.

Ben Straka, research and government affairs associate for the Washington-based conservative think tank Freedom Foundation, argues the NLRB union petition data “don’t bear out the picture that union leaders and their allies in government would like to paint.” He also noted union membership rates continue to decline.

“What’s arguably more interesting than the total number of filings touted by (President) Biden’s NLRB is the frequency of employee decertification efforts that the current administration has actively made it harder to pursue,” Straka said in an emailed statement. “Over the past eight years, for every three attempts made by unions to organize workers in Wisconsin, there’s been at least one attempt by employees to change or get rid of their union.”

The state Legislature could consider several proposals to revamp the Universities of Wisconsin system, including spinning off the University of Wisconsin-Madison and increasing tuition.

Since July, a legislative committee has been meeting to look at the future of the state’s public university system.

The result is nearly two dozen proposals that range from limiting programs offered at UW campuses to eliminating the UW-Madison chancellor position.

On Thursday, the legislative committee met for several hours to go over the proposals and decide which ones to forward onto the Legislature for further discussion.

Any change to the UW system’s structure requires legislative approval. That would happen when the session begins next year.

The 18-member committee includes two Democratic lawmakers, two Republican lawmakers and 14 others.

Several members have said they support spinning off UW-Madison as a way to lift up the other campuses and allow the flagship university to compete on a more national level.

But Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and system President Jay Rothman are opposed to the idea.

Beginning November 1, residents in nearly every county across Wisconsin will have the opportunity to choose from at least three different health insurance carriers on HealthCare.gov. Wisconsin has one of the most competitive individual health insurance markets in the nation with fifteen insurers participating in plan year 2025. An interactive map of health insurers available by county can be found here.

The bipartisan Wisconsin Healthcare Stability Plan (WIHSP) has also helped keep rates low for consumers every year since its implementation. In 2022, rates were 14.5% lower and in 2023, rates were 13.7% lower than they would have been without WIHSP.

Rates on HealthCare.gov would have increased by 19.5% for the 2025 plan year, based on a weighted average. Thanks to WIHSP, rates on the individual health insurance market in Wisconsin will instead increase by a weighted average of 8.2% for the 2025 plan year.

Visit WisCovered.com to learn about coverage options before the 2025 Open Enrollment period opens on November 1. Consumers are also encouraged to speak with a licensed insurance agent or broker, or call 2-1-1 to get connected with a navigator to learn more.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) on Wednesday reported that existing home sales declined 1% in September from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.84 million, which is a 3.5% drop from one year ago.

At the same time, the median sales price of existing homes jumped 3% from last September to $404,500, marking the 15th consecutive month of year-over-year price increases, the NAR said. The inventory of unsold existing homes, which includes single-family homes, townhouses and condominiums, rose by 1.5% in September from the prior month to 1.39 million.

“Home sales have been essentially stuck at around a four-million-unit pace for the past 12 months, but factors usually associated with higher home sales are developing,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun. “There are more inventory choices for consumers, lower mortgage rates than a year ago and continued job additions to the economy.”

Holden Lewis, a home and mortgage expert at NerdWallet, attributed the decline in existing home sales to a combination of rising mortgage rates and home prices that have pushed the prospect of a home purchase out of reach for more Americans amid an affordability crisis.