Fiscal Facts

Wisconsin continues to spend more than neighboring states and the national average on corrections, and its prison population has far greater racial disparities.

Amid the pandemic, health officials worried that debate and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines could influence public attitudes toward other vaccinations.

Total enrollment at Wisconsin’s public and charter schools sharply declined amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and has continued to fall since.

The city of Milwaukee’s 2024 budget proposal features a paradigm shift: after years of warnings about its finances nearing the brink, a revenue infusion from a new sales tax and state aid increase enables the city to generally maintain existing service levels and even invest in key areas.

Wisconsin seemingly swims in an abundance of fresh water. Unlike some western states that struggle with empty reservoirs and limits on growth imposed by water shortages, our municipal water supplies facing little threat, even during summer droughts.

With real estate values rocketing upward during the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap between local property tax assessments and market values in Wisconsin is now the largest in recent memory.

Wisconsin’s 13.1% increase in total equalized property values in 2023 was the second-largest percentage increase since at least 1985, topped only by slightly higher growth in 2022.

Rates of chronically absent students continued to increase in Wisconsin schools in the 2021-22 school year, with the reported data rising even more sharply than during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teacher turnover surged in Wisconsin in 2023 as record numbers of teachers moved between districts, and the most teachers since 2012 left public school classrooms altogether.

During the COVID-19 pandemic and its immediate aftermath, employment in higher-paying occupations in Wisconsin stayed largely stable, while thousands of lower-paying jobs were lost.