Data highlighting immigrant contributions to the Great Lakes state of Wisconsin was recently featured on the Wisconsin Public Radio article “Immigrants provide important economic contributions in Wisconsin, report says.” The piece centers on Upwardly Global’s newest report with the American Immigration Council, which studies the role immigrants play in revitalizing communities throughout the Great Lakes region.
Immigrants, with and without legal status, are playing a major role in the state economy and providing an important tax base for Wisconsin and other Great Lakes states.
A new report from Upwardly Global, a New York nonprofit that helps immigrants get paired with jobs that meet their skillsets, and the American Immigration Council looked at the economic impact immigrants are making in the Great Lakes states.
The report looked at immigrants with legal or protected status, according to Jina Krause-Vilmar, CEO of Upwardly Global.
In Wisconsin, the report found that immigrants paid $3 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, and held $3.3 billion in spending power. The report also said 17.9 percent of Wisconsin’s population growth from 2010 to 2022 was attributable to immigrants, helping offset population declines in rural areas.
The state’s aging population is expected to strain both the elder care and health care industries over the next decade.
“Not only are immigrants supporting population growth, but they’re also contributing to our workforce,” Krause-Vilmar said. “They’re also contributing in an outsized way in our rural communities.”
Immigrants make up about 5.9 percent of Wisconsin’s workforce and account for about 11 percent of the state’s agricultural workers, 5 percent of entrepreneurs and 9.5 percent of people working in science, technology, engineering and math fields.
Krause-Vilmar said the entrepreneurship piece is especially important to Great Lakes states because small- and medium-sized businesses help sustain local economies.
“It’s not large businesses that are really contributing a significant proportion to local economic growth,” she said. “Those small- and medium-sized businesses are really critical, and immigrants are taking on those roles. That means they’re generating jobs for other U.S. born folks to be contributing to the workforce as well.”