By Jim Golembeski

High-waisted, baggy, flared jeans, neutral colors. Comfort. Birkenstock sandals were essential. And they have to be worn with Nike socks.

My wife and I got to spend two days shopping with our granddaughter, and it was a wonderful chance to get a glimpse into her tweener brain. Seventh grade is an important time to start developing interests and habits that will lead to a successful career. I think she still has Veterinarian as a top choice, but I think the next few years will broaden her options. Gen Z has watched the Millennials struggle in the workforce with college degrees in the social sciences and college debt. They are more realistic about careers.

A little workforce history:  back in the 1980s, our K-12 schools largely eliminated what were called “shop classes,” i.e. training for the trades, to emphasize four-year college education instead. Those jobs in the trades belonged to the Baby Boomers and there were plenty of Boomers to meet the need back then. By the turn of the century, the Boomers started retiring and there was little training capacity to replace them in the trades. Factoid: in 2005, Lakeshore Technical College serving Manitowoc and Sheboygan Counties, one of the most intensive manufacturing regions of the country, did not have a welding program! At Bay Area Workforce Development Board, we helped them start one.  Continue reading here

Envision Board Member Jim Golembeski reviews
Men Without Work by Nicholas Eberstadt
And offers thoughts about the Wisconsin corrections system

Envision Board Member Jim Golembeski reviews and offers thoughts about the Wisconsin corrections system.

Our ENVISION Upward Mobility Signals Team recognizes that unemployment is a serious barrier to financial success. We have also identified a continuing worker shortage as a key driver in the coming decade for our region.

 So, I read Nicholas Eberstadt’s book, Men Without Work, a 2016 study of the American workforce, in which he concludes:

 America is now home to an immense army of jobless men no longer even looking for work—more than seven million alone between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, the traditional prime of working life.

 His recent edition provides a post-pandemic introduction as well. In it, he notes that COVID relief financial support programs might have unwittingly worsened the situation, particularly for older workers and the least wealthy portion of the workforce by providing temporary financial support. Those programs, however, have ended. 

A quick look this morning (May, 2025) at Job Center of Wisconsin, the state’s job board system, showed over 2,100 job orders for just Brown County. A job order may represent more than one opening as well. An aging workforce, low birth rate, and out-migration from the state are all putting pressure on our labor supply. Our manufacturers report attracting and retaining skilled workers as their biggest challenge. My colleague, Dennis Winters, State Labor Economist, projects that Wisconsin will have a labor shortage of over 122,000 workers by 2031.

 My friend, Paul Rauscher, retired owner of a local manufacturing business, has frequently tried to convince me that a large number of people in our community have voluntarily opted out of the workforce. They are either unwilling or unable to get and keep full-time employment. He likes to say, “Put their name on the back of their jersey and get them in the game!” He and I have both been working with The Joseph Project to do just that. But we have not had much success in finding these workforce dropouts.

 Eberstadt’s book provides a wealth of data. Continue reading here

Foresight on our Future Economy

Jim Golembeski, Upward Mobility

Twenty-five years ago, as Director of the Bay Area Workforce Development Board, I
experienced, along with my colleagues, the shockwave of local plant closings and
worker dislocation as new technology and economic globalization drove overwhelming
economic changes we hadn’t seen coming. Companies closed and workers lost jobs.
We weren’t looking for the signals back then; we didn’t know how. Continue reading here