[CLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST PART of this abstract from Washington Post’s first article on Door County]
“Housing is our number one impediment.”
— Michelle Lawrie, Door County’s top economic official
Wisconsin’s unemployment rate, now at 2.4 percent, hit record lows from February to April, intensifying the competition for workers statewide. And around here, more folks are nearing retirement age than filling out applications, said Michelle Lawrie, the county’s top economic official.
Even after boosting paychecks, she said, employers struggled to find staff.
“What we want to do is try to attract talent here for all of you to be able to have your workforce strong,” Lawrie, 49, told hundreds of business leaders gathered for a mid-May luncheon at a Sturgeon Bay resort. “Housing is our number one impediment.”
More than 80 percent of residents own their homes, which have a median value of roughly $242,000, census data show. The remaining real estate is mostly higher-end apartments and vacation rentals. The county had greenlighted hundreds of “attainable” units, Lawrie said, but hundreds more were needed.
Making life easier for migrants, whether they had legal status or not, came up repeatedly in focus groups of employers, she said. Business owners had discussed offering translation services and connecting people with immigration lawyers.
The keynote speaker she had invited that day, Mike Ward, a state economic development veteran, concluded his remarks with a question that went unanswered in the room: “Is there some population or community that we are leaving behind?”
‘We need good people’
Gary Federwitz, a sales engineer in the crowd, chewed his luncheon chicken at Table 7 and considered that query.
Yes, his industrial firm could no longer rely on the local talent pool. Recruiters now post billboards and visit high schools across the state, which had helped pad the employee roster.
Federwitz, 64, had no issue with migrant laborers, he said, as long as they had the proper documents. Door County had long relied on foreign workers. What he had seen on the news about the southern border, though — probably Fox News, he guessed — had spooked him. There was an interview with a Texas woman who said Mexican smugglers were showing up at people’s doors and demanding to use their phone charger.
“It’s way too easy to get into this country right now,” Federwitz said. “It makes me feel unsafe.”
He feared for his grandchildren.
“With all the child trafficking and whatever,” he said. “The drugs. The guns.”
No one had demanded to use his phone here, but Federwitz worried the threat could reach Door County. Trump would be better than Biden at blocking the bad guys, he thought. His business would welcome good people, people with legal status.
“Good people — anyone who is non-cartel — they all work hard,” he said. “We need good people.”
Across town, Dennis Statz, 69, was in the middle of another 14-hour shift at the White Lace Inn, the bed-and-breakfast he opened in 1982. Even after he had raised wages by 50 percent over the past three years, his too-small team was strained.
“I don’t bother putting up the ‘Help Wanted’ sign anymore,” said the Sturgeon Bay Common Council member. His only two hires since January were baby boomers who had gotten bored in retirement.
“I’m done with the belligerence.”
— Dennis Statz says of Donald Trump’s demeanor
On top of that, the grocery bills had soared, making it pricier to bake his guests strawberry rhubarb muffins and cherry apple crisps.
Maybe it was the war in Ukraine hampering food staples, he thought. Or maybe it was the labor shortage pushing employers like him to offset worker-luring raises with steeper price tags. He had increased room rates by 15 percent.
Whatever the reason, Statz, who describes his politics as “center right” and voted for Trump in 2020, blames the Biden administration.
“They certainly aren’t doing anything to help the situation,” he said.
Statz said he refused to budge, however, when — five times in recent years — a job applicant without a visa to work in the United States asked if he could pay wages in cash.
The innkeeper had read that 5,000 to 10,000 migrants were crossing the southern border daily without visas. The nation needed a border wall, he thought, and if Trump had stayed longer in office, he might have fulfilled that promise to build one.
Trump’s demeanor was grating, though — “I’m done with the belligerence,” Statz said — so he had been looking into Republican alternatives. He liked Vivek Ramaswamy, an Ohio entrepreneur who has floated transporting undocumented migrants “humanely and respectfully” back to their countries, and Perry Johnson, a Michigan businessman who has argued that, if worker visas were more accessible, fewer foreigners would sneak onto U.S. soil.
“They’re coming in so rapidly, we have no idea who is coming in,” Statz said. “I find that more than a little bothersome. Lord knows it’s all tied into the fentanyl issue. The drug issue.” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection screens migrants who might be eligible for release, including conducting criminal background checks.)
‘My tribe, your tribe’
When he flipped on the news — Fox, CNN, all of it — Mike Niss got sick of hearing the same message.
“Breaking news alert! The whole world is coming to an end,” said the 61-year-old developer, who moved to Door County four years ago from central Wisconsin. “The worst-case scenarios. The polarization. The ‘my tribe, your tribe.’”
So, weeks before the last presidential election, he canceled his DISH subscription, reduced his internet consumption and pledged to spend more time in nature. Specifically, Lake Michigan.
Most days, he waded into the chilly water — “dopamine release,” he told friends — to take the edge off life’s nuisances, which lately included another brush with “my tribe, your tribe.”
Niss hadn’t expected so much resistance when he proposed in April to convert 4.9 acres of public woodland in the northern bayside community of Fish Creek into “workforce housing.” He had envisioned seven apartment buildings with a total of four dozen 544-square-foot units. They would be sold to business owners who had agreed to rent them cheaply to employees who couldn’t afford to live there.
“Don’t people want the coffee shop to stay open?” Niss asked. “Don’t people want to be able to get their mocha whenever?”
