Weekly Fiscal Facts are provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. The Wisconsin Policy Forum logo can be downloaded here.
Venture capital investment in metro Milwaukee rose to record levels in 2024, marking progress in an area that has been a long-term weakness of its innovation economy. Metro Milwaukee also maintained longstanding strengths in the educational attainment of its workforce and its concentration of scientists and engineers.
However, several others metrics of innovation and economic growth remain points of concern for the region. These include lackluster worker productivity growth, median household incomes that lag the nation’s, and sluggish growth in total employment.
These and other findings stem from the Forum’s 2025 update to its Innovation DataTool. The tool tracks the four-county Milwaukee metro area over the last decade — and in relation to national comparison metros — on 17 indicators of innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Comparison metros used for the tool are: Austin, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, and Portland. Many of these are similarly sized metros located in or near the Midwest plus include two metros often identified as leaders in innovation (Austin and Portland).
Startup businesses in metro Milwaukee attracted more ($157.2 million) in venture capital investment in 2024 than in any previous year in our dataset, and more than twice as much as in 2023. On a per capita basis, however, the region attracted less venture capital funding than all but two of the comparison metros.
Metro Milwaukee also maintained two long-held innovation strengths in 2024: concentrations of adults with college degrees – and of scientists and engineers – above the national averages. The share of metro Milwaukee adults 25 and over with bachelor’s or advanced degrees (40.9%) ranked fourth among our 11 comparison metro areas in 2024. The region also ranked fourth in its concentration of scientists and engineers per 1,000 working-age adults.
Meanwhile, after growing jobs slowly but steadily from 2010 to 2019, metro Milwaukee lost almost all of those gains in 2020. It has since recovered somewhat, but total employment in 2024 (816,630) remained 1.9% below its 2018 peak. Metro Milwaukee is also in the bottom tier among our comparison metros in employment growth since 2014. The region’s job losses may be partially explained by a decline in its working-age population (ages 15 to 64).
Another point of concern is that Milwaukee’s previous progress in growing both median household and per capita incomes has faltered. In 2024, metro Milwaukee’s inflation-adjusted median household income remained below its 2019 peak for at least the fourth consecutive year (2020 data were not available). It also ranked seventh among the 11 peer metros. And while its 2019 median household income was slightly above the United States median, its 2024 median was clearly below the nation’s.
As recently as 2017, metro Milwaukee was competitive with its peers in 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 since slid, however, and in 2023 – the most recent year for which data are available — it ranked tenth among our 11 comparison metros.
This information is provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members as a service of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. Learn more at wispolicyforum.org.
