THU AM News: WMC survey finds lower support for tariffs among Wisconsin business leaders; Milwaukee metro area housing market ‘stable but constrained’

January 15, 2026

— The latest WMC survey found lower support for tariffs among Wisconsin business leaders, though more respondents reported profitability in the second half of 2025.

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce yesterday released the results of its Wisconsin Employer Survey on the economy and workforce. The group says business leaders in the state are “lukewarm” on the state and national economy.

“Although we see hints of optimism like increased hiring and a relatively good outlook for the U.S. economy, businesses are still frustrated with high healthcare costs and finding capable employees,” WMC President and CEO Kurt Bauer said in the report.

While 70% of surveyed business leaders continue to support tariffs, that marks a decline from the start of 2025 when 86% backed them. In the latest survey, 47% of respondents said tariffs had a negative impact on their business, 12% said they had a positive impact and 41% said they had no impact.

Ninety percent of respondents said they were profitable in the last six months of 2025, marking an increase from 86% in WMC’s summer survey. But 96% expect to be profitable in the first half of 2026.

Meanwhile, 60% said they’re having trouble finding workers. That’s an increase from 52% six months ago, but that was the lowest this measure has been in the last decade. It peaked at 88% in winter 2022. The recent increase indicates hiring is rebounding, according to WMC.

“This survey reveals that we have something of a bipolar economy,” Bauer said. “We have some good news and some bad news, but hiring trends are a sign that the economy is strengthening.”

Respondents had mixed views on the current strength of the state and national economy, with 60% saying the U.S. economy is moderate, 18% saying it’s strong or very strong and 21% calling it weak. At the state level, 73% said the economy is moderate, 19% said strong or very strong, and 8% said weak.

Still, 70% of respondents said they believe the country is headed in the right direction, compared to just 46% for Wisconsin alone.

When asked about their top business concerns, 32% said the national economy, 20% said health care costs, 16% said labor availability and 11% said excessive regulation.

But health care topped the list of state policy priorities for Wisconsin employers, with 43% saying the one thing state government could do to help them is make health care more affordable. That was followed by reducing or reforming regulations with 24% and reducing taxes with 16%.

The survey was conducted from Dec. 8 to Jan. 2 through an online survey and traditional mail, tapping 205 employers that WMC says are representative of its membership.

See the full results and the release.

— The greater Milwaukee area had a “stable but constrained” housing market in 2025, with total home sales for the year ending up just 1% higher than in 2024.

That’s according to the latest report from the Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors, which shows the four-county metro area had 17,231 homes sold last year. That’s up slightly from 17,058 homes sold in the prior year.

The year-end report also provides the first look at figures for December, when 1,340 homes were sold across Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties. That’s 2.1% more than in December 2024.

“While positive, this gain underscores how limited overall growth remains,” authors wrote.

They say last year continued a “significant market reset” that started in mid-2022, when mortgage interest rates jumped above 6% after being at historic lows. That led to fundamental changes in buyer behaviors and market trends, GMAR notes.

Due to this shift, 2023 sales were down 18.6% from 2022, reaching 16,586 that year. That’s compared to 23,827 homes sold in 2021.

“Since then, the metropolitan market has remained at this lower level of activity, without a meaningful rebound in volume … Compared to that peak, sales in 2025 were still 27.7% below record levels,” authors wrote.

Meanwhile, homebuyers are faced with “extraordinarily difficult conditions” with high levels of competition driving up prices in the region. Average prices reached a historic high of $470,702 last year, marking a 6.1% increase over the previous year.

GMAR says efforts to lower interest rates won’t help, and could in fact worsen this trend.

“With supply already constrained, lowering the cost of borrowing by reducing interest rates gives qualified buyers more purchasing power at current price levels,” authors wrote. “That added purchasing power increases competition for a limited number of homes, which can drive prices even higher.”

The group says the only way to ease market pressure is to add more homes. But the region needs about 8,000 more units to meet demand, and last year saw just 3,303 new listings.

See the report.

— Critics of a GOP-authored bill regulating data centers say Republicans are rushing to push incomplete legislation to a floor vote in the lower chamber.

Introduced on Friday, the state Affairs Committee plans to vote today on AB 840 before the full Assembly takes it up Tuesday.

That raised eyebrows among committee Democrats in a hearing yesterday. They noted the bill had been met by opposition from labor and conservation groups and contrasted it with a Dem-authored bill regulating data centers introduced more than a month ago.

“This is a major issue for the state of Wisconsin, and if we’re going to do this, we need to do this right,” said Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee. “I just don’t think this is ripe for prime time.”

Both the Dem and GOP bills include provisions to insulate ratepayers from new utility costs linked to data centers and control water usage by data centers.

The Dem bill requires data centers to draw at least 70% of their power from renewable sources, while the GOP bill requires any renewable energy facilities principally serving the data center to be hosted on-site.

The GOP bill also requires data center developers to provide a bond to the Department of Natural Resources to cover the cost of decommissioning a data center if the site shuts down.

Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, R-River Falls, said his bill was meant to prioritize a handful of key issues raised by Wisconsin residents and let the Public Service Commission decide how to control ratepayers’ energy bills, as opposed to a more prescriptive approach in the Dem legislation.

“How they want to do that, I’ll defer to them,” Zimmerman said of the regulatory agency.

Zimmerman said that he was working on several amendments to give Wisconsin workers priority to work on data center construction, broaden a provision requiring a closed-loop water system to allow for future, more water-efficient cooling systems, and give local governments more control over what to do with abandoned data center sites.

Committee Chair Rep. Rob Swearingen, R-Rhinelander, said he had not yet received those amendments but the committee would hear them when it voted to advance the bill at its executive session tomorrow; Zimmerman said he would have the amendments to committee members as soon as possible.

Legislative Council attorney Ethan Lauer noted in response to a query by Rep. John Spiros, R-Marshfield, that the bill as written would apply the closed-loop requirement to smaller, existing data centers already operating in the state.

Environmental groups criticized the GOP bill in testimony, with Chelsea Chandler of Clean Wisconsin saying that the Legislature’s response to new data centers needed a “comprehensive approach, not piecemeal legislation.”

Conversely, Adam Jordahl of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce thought the bill overreached and could inadvertently include telecommunications facilities and existing data centers under its scope.

WMC also opposes the DNR bond requirement, with Jordahl saying the lobby opposed any measure that could potentially delay economic development.

— Gov. Tony Evers is spotlighting a $49.1 million economic impact from outdoor recreation destinations around the state.

The guv’s office yesterday announced the impact figures for locations in Dane, Door, Iron, Oconto, Oneida and Vilas counties. The findings come from the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Economic Impact Program under the state’s Office of Outdoor Recreation.

The biggest contributions to the total impact figure include $25.7 million from the Heart of Vilas County Bike Trail System, and $20.1 million from Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison.

“Biking, hiking, canoeing, fishing, snowmobiling, skiing — you name it — outdoor recreation is a part of our culture as Wisconsinites and drives local economies, while also supporting folks’ mental and physical health to boot,” Evers said in a statement.

See more in the release.

— Lawmakers seeking to restrict access to abortion medication are reviving a strategy that has so far failed to gain traction in the states: holding drug manufacturers liable for alleged contamination of public water systems.

A bill introduced in Wisconsin in December and legislation expected soon in West Virginia argue that traces of abortion drugs in wastewater pose an environmental and public health threat. The approach, promoted by a national anti-abortion group, has divided abortion-rights opponents, and similar bills have repeatedly stalled amid questions about science, cost and enforcement.

The strategy is resurfacing after reports that scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have been directed to explore whether the abortion drug mifepristone can be detected in wastewater.

See the full story from Pluribus/State Affairs here.

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