Metro Milwaukee Innovation DataTool 2024

Key Findings

Our Metro Milwaukee Innovation DataTool tracks the region’s performance over the last decade and in relation to national peers on 17 indicators tied to innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Below, we highlight several key findings from our 2024 DataTool update. Most of metro Milwaukee’s clearest strengths and weaknesses are longstanding but important to highlight, and we also find several striking areas where the region has improved or declined. We hope these findings help economic development leaders and the broader community understand how the metro area is progressing and set priorities for future advancement.

Strengths and Areas of Progress

Metro Milwaukee is competitive with its national peers on a number of economic indicators, including several pertaining to regional talent. Those include gradually improving educational attainment, a solid supply of workers in occupations associated with innovation, and relatively strong income growth over the last decade.

Educational Attainment

Educational attainment in metro Milwaukee is slowly but steadily increasing. The share of the region’s adults (ages 25 and over) with bachelor’s or advanced degrees increased by 7.3 percentage points between 2013 and 2023, which outpaced seven of the 10 comparison metro areas included in our DataTool. In 2023, over 40% of metro Milwaukee adults had a bachelor’s or advanced degree for the first time, surpassing both a majority of the comparison metros and the U.S. average.

Scientists and Engineers

Scientists and engineers help to drive innovation through research and development activities. In 2023, metro Milwaukee had a higher concentration of scientists and engineers than all but two of our comparison metros, and its ratio also exceeded the national average. Industrial and mechanical engineers are particularly concentrated in the area.

This is a long-term strength of metro Milwaukee. The region ranked fourth among the 11 comparison metros in 2018 and has ranked third ever since.

Knowledge Workers

Metro Milwaukee also performs relatively well in its concentration of knowledge workers, which are defined as those employed in any occupation that typically requires at least a bachelor’s degree. In 2023, the region ranked fourth among the 11 comparison metros and above the national average on this indicator.

Income Growth

Along with creating jobs, the ultimate goal of economic development efforts is to increase prosperity by raising the incomes of area residents. Metro Milwaukee showed promising income growth in 2023 after struggling in previous years, resulting in the fourth fastest growth rate among our 11 comparison metros between 2013 and 2023.

While this progress is promising, the region’s inflation-adjusted median household income of $77,006 in 2023 was 1.9% lower than its 2019 peak and was slightly below the national median of $77,719.

Weaknesses and Areas of Concern

On a number of other measures, metro Milwaukee struggles to keep up with its national peers, and on some metrics the region has actually declined in its rank among our comparison metros. These findings show areas where improvement is possible and may be needed for metro Milwaukee to compete nationally.

Venture Capital Funding

One of metro Milwaukee’s long-standing weaknesses is venture capital (VC) investing, which typically supports startup companies with strong potential for growth. While VC investing is highly concentrated in a small number of metro areas on the west and east coasts, metro Milwaukee trails even its Midwestern peers and has been near the bottom on this indicator for many years.

On a per-capita basis, metro Milwaukee fell to the bottom of the 11 comparison metros in the amount of VC investment it attracted in 2023 after ranking tenth in 2022 and ninth in 2021. Between 2021 and 2023, metro Milwaukee also attracted the lowest amount of total VC investment per year ($85 million) and the smallest average VC deal ($2.3 million) among the comparison metros.

Employment

Job creation is one of the primary goals of economic development efforts. After growing jobs slowly but steadily from 2010 to 2019, metro Milwaukee lost almost all of those gains in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on public health and the economy. The region has since recovered somewhat, but total employment in 2023 (813,424) remained below 2016 levels and well below its 2019 peak of 832,360.

The region’s job losses may be partially explained by a recent decline in its working age population (those ages 15 to 64), which fell by 3.7% between 2016 and 2023. Job recovery has been much stronger statewide and nationally, with total employment in Wisconsin and the U.S. reaching new peaks in 2023.

Metro Milwaukee is also in the bottom tier among our comparison metros in employment growth since 2013 and added jobs at a far slower pace than the national average during that decade.

Productivity

Until recently, metro Milwaukee was competitive with its peers in its per-employee gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the value of all finished goods and services produced within an area. The region’s productivity has slid, however, and in 2022 it ranked above only the Oklahoma City metro on this indicator. Additionally, metro Milwaukee’s GDP increased at the slowest pace among the comparison metros between 2012 and 2022.

It is important to note that the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis relies heavily on employee compensation and tax receipts to estimate GDP at the state and local levels and may not be precise. Wisconsin also ranked last in 2022 in GDP per employee when compared with the states in which our peer metros are located.

After adjusting for inflation, the value of metro Milwaukee’s global exports dropped by more than 25% between 2012 and 2022. This is another concerning trend that could be contributing to the region’s sluggish pace of GDP growth.

Business Births and Exits

U.S. Census Bureau data allow us to track the number of businesses that open (births) and close (exits) each year. Despite business births exceeding exits in metro Milwaukee for the fourth consecutive year in 2022, the region’s birth-to-exit ratio (1.05) was the lowest of the 11 comparison metros that year. This marked a change from previous years, when Milwaukee typically fell near the middle of the pack. While metro Milwaukee’s ratio remained steady from 2021 to 2022, the ratios in several comparison metros (Austin, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Portland) improved greatly in 2022 as did the ratio nationally.

new in 2024

Venture Capital Funding for Female Founded Companies

Of the nearly $313 million in venture capital funding that Milwaukee area startups attracted between 2021 and 2023, our analysis finds less than 20% went to companies with at least one female founder. That includes 6.8% for companies founded solely by women, which is actually higher than the national rate of 2.1%, according to Pitchbook.