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Where are the Workers?

Similar to anywhere else in the world, the number of people in the Door County workforce is cyclical. Even looking outside of seasonality, the Door County economy functions in relation to the national economy, and workers ebb and flow along with the work. Despite facing a labor shortage in 2015, with businesses struggling to find enough workers to fill their staff, the problem is not unique to the county or unique within the county’s history.

When a labor shortage hits, the county has always looked to bring in outside help, whether seasonal or full-time.

Over the years, the three main sectors of Door County’s economy have shifted in their dominance, explained Bill Chaudoir, executive director of the Door County Economic Development Corporation (DCEDC).

Agriculture was the biggest player in the pre-industrial era, when local growers realized the weather was just right to grow cherries and apples. At the turn of the 20th century through the 1940s and ’50s, fruit orchards were forced to bring in migrant workers for the summer harvest.

Len Villano

Photo by Len Villano.

The seasonality of fruit agriculture gave way to a more industrial agriculture sector in the middle of the century before the manufacturing industry began to grow in Sturgeon Bay.

Meanwhile, the shipbuilding business tied itself to the global economy. When the world needed ships during war time or when private companies began shipping their heavy machinery around the world, the yards bustled with life.

“This was a huge shipbuilding port. There were four shipyards operating in Sturgeon Bay at that time,” said Chaudoir about the World War II era. “They built temporary housing in Sturgeon Bay for the shipyard workers. There was a bus line that traveled between Green Bay and Sturgeon Bay. There were thousands of ship workers during those years.”

The shipbuilding companies footed the bill for these transportation and housing costs as their own profits soared from building ships for the war effort.

Emerson Motors brought back the Green Bay employee bus line in the 1990s when they faced a shortage of workers in a period of high economic growth. These were solutions used by businesses to match their production needs, but they were far from sustainable.

Eventually, business would slow down or new regulations, such as decreasing tax incentives in the 1980s that halted the shipbuilding economy, would make these labor shortage solutions irrelevant.

Sam Perlman, economic development manager at DCEDC, believes the issue of labor shortage is not specific to any industry or just Door County.

“Businesses are growing now, businesses are willing to invest, they are hiring and we don’t have the population right now to support a lot of that growth,” said Perlman. “What we saw [in 2015] certainly was not exclusive to Northern Door, it was not exclusive to seasonal employment. Everybody is looking.”

The unemployment rate in the 11-county region served by the Bay Area Workforce Development Board, which includes Door and Kewaunee counties, is hovering at three percent, near full employment, meaning businesses around Northeast Wisconsin are all feeling a pinch of labor shortage.

But the larger economy never affected the view of the water or beauty of the bluffs, making tourism a third leg in the county’s success.

“Tourism significantly accelerated in the last 25 years or so,” said Chaudoir. “Obviously it started slow and grew over the years. I think tourism has been a part of the Door County economy going back to the turn of the 20th century.”

The growth of the tourism economy in Door County harkens back to the seasonality of fruit orchards, when growers would bring in hundreds of migrants for a short period of time to fill the labor gap.

In the past, that temporary help has come in the form of college students on summer break, local high school kids, and foreign students using a J-1 Visa.

There just were not enough of them last year.

Housing

One of the biggest impediments to finding workers, especially in Northern Door, is the dire shortage of affordable living options.

Habitat for Humanity is the primary organization in the county and across the nation that focuses on affordable housing. While the organization has provided 38 homes in the county since it began, the group is not in the market for seasonal housing, which most people in Northern Door cite as the bane to their workforce needs.

“We at Habitat are looking to provide decent and affordable permanent housing, which I understand is a shortage of probably seasonal housing,” said David Van Dyke, executive director of Door County Habitat for Humanity and member of the Door County Housing Authority. “That falls outside of our wheelhouse.”

Habitat’s wheelhouse is in increasing the available housing stock. While they only build homes when there is someone waiting to live in them, the construction does add one more house to the pot should that person move elsewhere.

Other organizations such as the nonprofit Door County Economic Development Corporation (DCEDC) have programs that help people pay for housing through favorable loans but only at low-income levels. There is no support for a middle-income family looking for a home to buy or rent in certain areas of the county.

With housing being a primary player in the struggling Door County economy, the area could use an organization that is dedicated to the issue. Instead of loan programs strictly for low-income housing, the DCEDC could look at more programs to develop other housing options, which the group did do with a set of apartments in Sister Bay and is currently working on with Baileys Harbor.

The High Schools

There is another group of workers in Door County that typically have a permanent place to live, something to keep them busy in the winter offseason and lack the experience to look anywhere else for employment. They are our high school students.

Anyone age 16 and older can work with almost no restrictions to their employment. Those less than 16 years old can still be a part of the workforce under certain conditions. The high school workforce has contributed not only to the busy summer season, but into the fall when the students living elsewhere have left.

But this population of our workforce is graduating and leaving the county while the upcoming classes are dwindling in size.

Enrollment at the four largest public high schools in the county has decreased an average of 21 percent since 1990. Sevastopol has lost almost one-third of their high school enrollment and Sturgeon Bay is down almost 50 students from 25 years ago.

For every student lost in a downsizing high school, the county loses a potential eight years of summer employment between high school and college.

Workforce Task Force

Despite many conversations at the county level, philanthropic level or on a couple of bar stools, the solutions to the problem of a dwindling workforce are hard to pin down. They can be as broad as student loan debt stifling the enjoyment of students spending summers in the county and the aging population to the simple fact that it is hard to find a place to live for just three months of the busy season.

Back in 2005, the DCEDC released an Economic Development Adjustment Plan to focus on how to push the economy of Door County forward as a whole. With a lifespan of 10 years, the plan died recently, leaving room for another look at what is holding the county’s economy back. Perlman believes addressing the labor shortage will be one of the primary focuses.

One subgroup of the DCEDC that has addressed the issue in the past has been the Workforce Task Force, a group of business and community leaders in the county that convenes to address any crises that the county faces.

“It has ebbed and flowed as need has ebbed and flowed. In the early 2000s, when we were bussing people from Green Bay to work at Emerson Motors, we had a very active and engaged Workforce Task Force because we had a crisis, so we were throwing resources and we had meetings all the time,” said Perlman. “Then we hit a recessionary period and we had no immediate needs and that group sort of petered out. Then we had another spike. I wouldn’t be surprised if, coming in 2016, our Workforce Task Force will be meeting regularly because we have an issue.”