RURAL SLIDE: PART TWO OF THREE IN A SERIES
In this three-day series, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism explores rural population losses in three Wisconsin counties — and potential statewide solutions.
Main project page
PART ONE:
Would young people stay in rural area for mining jobs? Oct. 7, 2012.
PART TWO:
A young mayor strives to rebuild jobs lost in paper mills. Oct. 8, 2012.
PART THREE:
Hispanic immigrants help rural county stave off population dip. Oct. 9, 2012.
Interactive map
Click the map to explore which Wisconsin counties lost the most people between 2000 and 2010, and compare these shifts with changes in other states.
Audio slideshows
Click to watch audio slideshows of some of the young people interviewed by the Center’s Lukas Keapproth and Mario Koran.
WISCONSIN RAPIDS — On a drive through southern Wood County, Dave Engel pulls his car to the side of the road, steps onto the street and points to the paper mill across the Wisconsin River.
“This mill was money making, efficient, community oriented — everything you would want in a company — until the paper industry started to crack,” Engel says. “Now it’s just a symbol. We used to be on the cutting edge. Now we’re on the bloody edge.”
Engel is a retired University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point English professor and a scholar on Wood County history. He remembers when the county was the headquarters for some of the world’s largest paper companies.
Engel has seen his hometown devolve from a place of wealth to one of economic insecurity as one of its largest employers, the paper industry, has declined. Now, he says, young people are leaving faster than ever.
Wisconsin’s population grew 6 percent during the 2000s. But one-fourth of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, including Wood, lost population between 2000 and 2010. Overall, the county’s population declined by 1.1 percent. Meanwhile, the population of every surrounding county grew.
The decline in paper-industry jobs statewide and in Wood County has been drastic. Wisconsin has lost 35 percent of its paper mill jobs over the past decade, dropping from 48,000 jobs to 31,000.
In all, 34 plants, including two in Wood County, have closed.
The loss to Wood County has been even more dramatic: In the past decade, the county lost nearly 50 percent of its paper manufacturing jobs, down to 2,200 jobs from 4,300 jobs in 2001, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“People have always been leaving the farms, they’ve always been leaving the mill towns,” Engel says. “The sad part is that people who want to stay, can’t figure out how to.”
In the late 1990s, paper companies’ profits started to plummet, due in part to rising pulp costs and moves toward a paperless society brought on by digital technology, he says.
Engel says Consolidated Paper was critical to his family’s financial success. It paid his father decent wages, enabled his mother to stay home with the children, and even provided him a summer job that he used to pay for college.
Like any parent, Engel says, he wants to live close to his children, but he also knew Wisconsin Rapids wasn’t right for his daughter.
After she graduated from high school, Engel’s now 22-year-old daughter, Angelica, left Wood County to attend UW-Madison. She was looking for a more vibrant, creative culture in Madison that she thought was lacking at nearby UW-Stevens Point.
“Rapids feels hopeless, at least for me,” says Angelica, who graduated in May from UW-Madison. “People who are there don’t necessarily want to be there. Some got stuck. It feels still and stagnant; I can feel it in the air. And I don’t feel inspired by it.”
Life after the mills
At 24, Zach Vruwink did not create the problems that caused the population decline in Wood County. But, as the recently elected mayor of Wisconsin Rapids, it is his job to help fix them.
Vruwink, named a ‘Millennial Mayor’ by Atlantic magazine, is part of a growing number of young mayors elected by communities seeking fresh ideas.
In his parents’ generation, “The understanding was, you graduated high school, and you were able to go work in the mill,” Vruwink says.
But his stepfather was laid off from one of the mills, and by the time Vruwink entered the workforce, the promise of a job in the industry had largely evaporated.
“In high school, the perception and the attitude of most of my peers was that, ‘I will not return to this community. Wisconsin Rapids is a dying mill town, and I have no future here,’ ” Vruwink says. “The reality was, I was not going to derive (an income) from the paper industry, I was not going to get a job in the mill.”
It is the negative perception of small towns, as much the local job market, that needs to be addressed if Wisconsin Rapids is to regain its former status, says Vruwink, mayor of the 18,340-population city.
Millworkers still make up a large percentage of the community’s workforce, but Vruwink sees new potential in the cranberry bogs and marshes surrounding Wisconsin Rapids. The city is poised to recreate its image as a major food producer and processor, he says.
Storm clouds roll in on a rural farm off Highway 97 near Marshfield, Wis. on July 8, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Yet, this small central Wisconsin community faces a problem with which many areas of the state are now familiar: the widening gap between the skills employers want and the training and experience of local residents looking for work.
Mariani Cranberry, for example, plans to expand and create new jobs at its processing plant. The company is looking for workers with advanced degrees and high-tech skills — not necessarily the kind of person once employed by the paper industry.
As more young people move away, Vruwink says, it gets harder to draw new businesses to the area.
The mayor says he prefers a grow-your-own approach in which local businesses such as Mariani Cranberry or Ocean Spray would offer internships to young people and encourage them to pursue careers and opportunities locally.
“If somebody wants to locate here to grow a business here, and they don’t see the workforce with the skills, of course they’re going to leave and we’re never going to be able to retain firms here,” Vruwink says.
Vruwink says part of his job is to spend time with students. He tells them, “ ‘Yup, you need to get your education. And it’s quite all right to go off to school, but always consider moving and returning back to your community because we need young ideas, we need educated individuals.’ ”
Jake Long (center) waits his turn at bat during an amateur baseball game in Marshfield, Wis., on July 11, 2012. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Working together to keep young people
Across the county, Marshfield’s population of 19,000 has remained stable despite job losses in the manufacturing and model home sectors. One big reason is the Marshfield Clinic, which has 779 physicians in 54 locations throughout northern, central and western Wisconsin.
Marshfield Mayor Chris Meyer says it’s time to change the approach to attracting and retaining talented young people.
One strategy is the planned expansion next fall of the UW-Wood County in Marshfield from a two-year school to a four-year campus, allowing students to live and finish their degrees locally.
Another strategy is regional cooperation. Meyer believes that by acting as a region, communities in and around Wood County can attract businesses and population through collaboration rather than competition.
Meyer, along with the mayors of Wausau and Stevens Point, earlier this year secured a commitment from the Medical College of Wisconsin to build a satellite medical school in central Wisconsin by 2015.
Meyer says the new training facility will send students to hospitals in Marshfield, Wausau, Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids for clinical rotations.
“For the last few years, it’s been sort of a defense, ‘What do we do to keep what we’ve got, let alone attracting people?’ We just wanted to stop the bleeding,” Meyer says. “Now, it’s time for us to be more proactive.”
“We’re a health care community,” Meyer says. “But we don’t have the water or recreational opportunities that Point does. Rapids has industry. Separately, we can attract some people, but as a region, we can attract more.”
The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
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It’s interesting that so much of this article emphasizes the importance of EDUCATION in creating a viable local economy that retains and attracts young people.
Wisconsin Republicans spent the last 2 years trashing teachers and slashing education and technical training budgets at all levels, while giving corporations and a minority of wealthy interests unnecessary and unproductive tax breaks. How did the resulting loss of education services help the economies of all these rural areas?
The issue of rural decline also highlights the need to promote SUSTAINABLE, diverse, and stable economies that aren’t dependent on just one or two huge corporate factories.
But again, Republicans believe “sustainability” is a dirty word and part of a secret worldwide “conspiracy.” Apparently, they want UNsustainable economies in Wisconsin instead.
Another thought: Over the next 30 years, as climate change causes more everyday hardship from heat, drought, disease, crop failures and economic decline in southern and western states … our Great Lakes states will experience a population (and business) growth surge, causing completely different problems in our region.
If I were a young Southerner and starting a family, I’d move north NOW, beat the rush, and get settled before the crunch comes. I would create a new occupation or business if I had to, at least temporarily, to build a secure niche for my family. (Wisconsin’s water and agricultural systems will become increasingly valuable.)
Wisconsin should be preparing now for that growth surge, but of course, Republicans don’t believe in Climate Change either.
Education is the key, but proud ignorance is running our state.