Conference Gives Milwaukee a Good — But Not Great — Progress Report as a Water Hub

Ten years ago, Marquette Law School sponsored a conference, “Milwaukee 2015: Water, Jobs, and the Way Forward.” Speakers at the conference, including Wisconsin’s then-Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, put forward a vision of Milwaukee becoming a world leader in water expertise with a Milwaukee area economy boosted by an influx of water-based jobs and companies.

On Nov. 5, 2019, a decade later almost to the day, the Law School convened a follow up conference (titled “Milwaukee 2025: Water, Jobs, and the Way Forward”) with some of the same speakers, as well as others, to ask how things have been going and what lies ahead.

How would you rate Milwaukee’s record on becoming a water hub? Mayor Barrett responded that the area has moved in the right direction. “I won’t give us an A plus, I’ll give us a solid B for moving in that direction,” he said. “We have changed the perception of Milwaukee in a significant way in the last 10 years.”

Marquette University President Michael R. Lovell, a major proponent of the emphasis on water, said the goal in 2009 was to make Milwaukee a global center of excellence for all things related to water, “something like the CDC for water,” a reference to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Lovell said, “We have not gotten there yet; we are still striving to do so.” Milwaukee should be proud of what has been done, including the creation of The Water Council, the Global Water Center, and the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Lovell said.

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Wisconsin voters give Trump different ratings on the economy and foreign policy, but it doesn’t affect his overall job approval among partisans

Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all give Trump higher ratings on the economy than on foreign policy, but this doesn’t affect their overall approval of Trump among members of either party.

Trump approval ratings among different parties

Republicans only give Trump a net +58% approval rating on foreign policy, but his overall net job approval matches that of his economic job approval (+83% and +84%, respectively).

Inversely, Democrats give Trump a net -78% rating on the economy, but their overall job approval is identical to their foreign policy approval at -94%.

Independents are more mixed. They give Trump a +8% net rating on the economy and a -31% rating on foreign policy. His overall approval lies in the middle at -10%.

Continue ReadingWisconsin voters give Trump different ratings on the economy and foreign policy, but it doesn’t affect his overall job approval among partisans

What’s going on with Milwaukee’s population [update]

What’s going on with Milwaukee’s population [update]

Last month I wrote about how Milwaukee’s population has fallen by around 5,000 since 2015, erasing the city’s tepid growth in the first half of the 2010s. Today, the Census released its latest 1-year estimates from the American Community Survey (ACS). They cover the year from July 1, 2017 to July 1, 2018.

The ACS estimates Milwaukee lost 3,363 individuals from 2017 to 2018, with a margin of error of 85.1 This places the city’s total population at 592,002. An alternative federal program uses administrative records and a survey of housing units to estimate population.2 It places the city’s 2018 population at 592,025.

All Census products now agree that Milwaukee has experienced negative population growth since 2010.

The main driver of Wisconsin’s population loss are shrinking numbers of (non-Hispanic) white residents. ACS estimates suggest that the white population declined by about 4,000 each year since 2015.

For the first time, it appears Milwaukee’s black population is also declining. 2018 was the second year this decade in which the annual Census estimate of black population change since 2010 fell outside the margin of error. In 2018, there were probably around 11,000 fewer black residents living in Milwaukee than in 2010.

Even Milwaukee’s Asian population, which had shown strong signs of growth in the first half of the decade seems to be leveling off. Only the Latino population shows signs of consistent growth. The number of “Hispanic or Latino” residents of any race has grown by about 17,000 over the course of the decade thus far.

  1. 90% confidence interval↩
  2. The Population Estimates Program (PEP)’s methodology is available here.↩
Continue ReadingWhat’s going on with Milwaukee’s population [update]