While Wisconsin's unemployment rate has hit record lows for the past four months, some industries say they're still struggling to hire workers in the state.

What You Need To Know

  • Despite record-low unemployment, some some industries say they're still struggling to hire workers in the state

  • Some states and industries, like Wisconsin's ironworking field, are turning to apprenticeship programs to try and address labor shortages

  • The numbers come at a time when the United States' unemployment rate is sitting at a low of 3.7%; It's even lower in Wisconsin, a record 2.4%

Looking for a fresh start, Army veteran Jacob Kimpfbeck took up iron work.

"I've never welded before," said Kimpfbeck. "I got out of the Army, and I was looking for a job. My dad's in the trades, and he always told me good things about the ironworkers and how the job can be interesting and adrenaline-inducing."

Now six months in the industry, Kimpfbeck hopes his experience will spark others' interest in the field.

"I always try to tell people and my friends that are looking for a job or anything like that, that this would be something to check out," he said.

Kimpfbeck is one of more than 100 trainees to go through Madison’s Local 383 Iron Workers Apprenticeship program this year. Peter Stern, the program's coordinator, called the number of apprentices they're taking in now is an "extremely large" group.

"In a normal year, if we put on 30, 35, maybe, that would be a good number," he added.

That's a lot of people, Stern says, but not enough. Businesses in the area are having a hard time finding folks to take up the torch.

"They're asking us to provide them with personnel," he said, adding: "You can tell from our interactions that they're trying really hard to feed people, get people into their organizations, and then feed them like a pipeline into all the trades."

The demand is high. This year, Wisconsin saw a monthly average of more than 1,000 new hires in the field, according to the American Welding Society (AWS). It also tracked an average of nearly 300 new job postings monthly.

The numbers come at a time when the United States' unemployment rate is sitting at a low of 3.7%. It's even lower in Wisconsin, a record 2.4%.

"So we're talking about very low unemployment," Joelle Gamble, deputy director of the National Economic Council, told Spectrum News. "Lots of people back at work. Wages have been rising for months now. And so this is all part of the historic labor market recovery."

Appleton, Eau Claire, La Crosse, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Racine, and Wausau all set new record low unemployment rates in April according to a Metro Unemployment Report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Gamble says with fewer people looking for work, employers are competing for workers "for the first time in a long time."

"Those are consistent," Gamble said. "Those are the same story, right? What I think is really, really important is that we create good jobs and help people connect to those good jobs, but we also help people who aren’t actively looking for work, which is what the unemployment rate measures, get back in the workforce."

Stern agrees, saying it's getting harder to recruit trainees when adjacent industries are offering prosepective employees more.

"Sometimes the young folks, they just look at, [and think they] seem pretty comparable," Stern said. "But, they’re not looking to the future. A brand new apprentice, they're making wages and benefits over $50 bucks an hour."

The AWS predicts the U.S. could see a deficit of more than 300,000 welders. It's a future that programs like Stern's hope to avoid.