Wisconsin manufacturers thrive despite shrinking workforce

WISCONSIN – Between January 2025 and January 2026, Wisconsin’s manufacturing workforce shrank by roughly 9,500 jobs according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but Jen Fietz, CEO of Stoke RGA, a Green Bay-based revenue growth accelerator for manufacturers, said it’s not a cause for concern.

“I don’t see it as a crisis. The industry isn’t collapsing — it’s just changing shape,” Fietz said.

“When we saw the job numbers come out...” she said. “That’s scary. 9,500 jobs is a lot of jobs... When I started to dig into the numbers a little bit more, it looked like it was jobs that weren’t filled. We’ve got a large population of baby boomers that are retiring, so as the industry starts to gain these efficiencies, they’re allowing retirees to go and those positions then no longer get filled.”
As a generation of workers retire, Fietz said manufacturers are beginning to adopt new technology to fill the gaps.

“We’ve been talking about it as an industry for at least five years, knowing that our largest generation is going to exit the workforce and we definitely don’t have the replacement population here in Wisconsin...” Fietz said. “There’s automation and robotics and AI and ways that these manufacturing facilities are able to run off of learner operational models, creating some real efficiency. Manufacturing is kind of a slow adapter to a lot of things digital, and so we’re seeing a kind of catch-up happen here.”

“A lot of these manufacturers were running on what we’ll call a system that worked really well for us 20 years ago,” Fietz said. “A lot of those systems and mindsets were set in place for more of a predictable future. I’m excited about it because it really means that our manufacturers are preparing themselves to be able to pivot.”

It’s an ability that is especially important to today’s manufacturers.

“Our world is changing very quickly — needs, demands, the way we access supplies, the way things get sold...” Fietz said. “We’re creating this efficiency which is allowing more agility and preparing our manufacturers to be able to move and pivot as environments change.”

And as the industry changes, Fietz said she expects to see continued decline in workforce numbers, as well as changes to the types of positions manufacturers are looking to fill.

“I think we could see another cast of numbers like this, but I think the story is going to be the same because I think the transformation is just getting started,” Fietz said. “I think we’ve got a couple of years. We’ll see some really transformative adjustments happen to our workforce, but we know that we don’t have the workforce in the state of Wisconsin to fill the open jobs that we have.”

“The way we replace the baby boomer generation leaving the workforce, it’s going to be an evolution of new jobs...” Fietz said. It’s been kind of this perfect storm where we’ve got this great technology that can help us successfully move our businesses forward, but also we can meet the demands of our young people who want more technology, more exciting jobs and things that are high tech in those engineering and manufacturing roles.”

In Green Bay, Fietz said years of planning for changes in the workforce have meant that local industries are faring fine.

“During the pandemic, we were short. We couldn’t find people to fill holes,” Fietz said. “There was a lot of good thinking and a lot of good preparation on behalf of our manufacturers for the point where we’d have to be prepared to have a smaller workforce and I think we’re seeing the response to that right now. I go to a lot of events and we’ve got a lot of people raising their hands going, ‘We’re good,’ and, ‘We foresee having a good year.’”

“We’re really thinking through how AI is going to impact the roles that these young people are going to fill,” Fietz said.