Menominee County Leads Wisconsin With 4.7% Employment Growth in 2025

Menominee County topped every county in Wisconsin for employment growth, posting a 4.7% gain for the year ending Q2 2025, according to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue's Monthly Economic Update. The figure stands in sharp contrast to Rusk County, which recorded the state's steepest employment decline over the same period at -6.8%.

The one-year growth rate captures a different picture than the county's longer-term trend. Between 2018 and 2023, Menominee County lost a net total of 100 jobs, according to Jobcenterofwisconsin's 2025 Menominee County Profile, with average employment levels reaching just 1,974 jobs in 2023. Those figures measure a five-year net change and an annual employment snapshot; the Department of Revenue's 4.7% reflects a single year of movement ending in the second quarter of 2025. Both data points are accurate; they simply describe different periods.

The county's employment base in 2023 was heavily anchored in education and health services, which accounted for 39.1% of total employment. At the subsector level, educational services employed 399 workers, executive and legislative government support employed 324, and social assistance employed 145. Those three subsectors alone represent a substantial share of a small county's workforce. Any reading of those industry figures requires one important caveat: 30.4% of county employment, totaling 601 jobs, was withheld from the Jobcenterofwisconsin table to protect the confidentiality of employers, meaning the visible counts are incomplete by design.

The fastest-growing industry over the 2018 to 2023 window was trade, transportation, and utilities, which added 37 jobs for a 20.3% growth rate, the highest of any sector during that period.

Looking ahead, occupational projections for the Bay Area Workforce Development Area, the region that includes Menominee County's broader labor market, point to transportation and material moving as the top source of new jobs between 2022 and 2032, accounting for 11.6% of total regional employment growth. Stockers and order fillers are projected to lead that category with 1,064 new positions, followed by laborers and freight and material movers at 854 and heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers at 607.

Statewide projections from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development's Office of Economic Advisors show a similar emphasis on physical-economy jobs, with transportation and material moving adding 3,934 positions across Wisconsin by 2032, a 9.1% increase from the 2022 baseline of 43,226. Computer and mathematical occupations are projected to grow the fastest statewide at 17.8%, rising from 9,209 positions in 2022 to 10,846 in 2032, driven largely by software developers adding 513 jobs, computer systems analysts adding 182, and computer user support specialists adding 151. Total Wisconsin employment across all occupation groups is projected to grow from 463,024 to 497,026, a net gain of 34,002 jobs, or 7.3%, over the decade.

Key questions remain unanswered about what drove Menominee County's Q2 2025 surge. The Department of Revenue has not specified in available materials whether the 4.7% figure reflects private payroll employment, total nonfarm employment, or Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data, nor whether seasonal hiring or a single large employer accounts for a meaningful portion of the gain. The Wisconsin Department of Revenue's full Monthly Economic Update contains additional methodology and context.