Good Question!

February 4th, 2010 by Mark Neumann - Comments (2)

There is a new report stating that Milwaukee has the third worst record in the nation, in terms of jobs lost over the last twelve months.  It is important to understand the following: the rest of America DOES NOT have it as bad as those in Milwaukee, where my two opponents both occupy positions of authority.  Only Detroit and Las Vegas were worse.

Milwaukee was once a city to be envied by so many in our nation and as governor one of my goals is to help restore our largest metropolitan area to its former greatness.

Yesterday we sent out a press release, asking Tom Barrett and Scott Walker to explain the job loss in Milwaukee over the last twelve months.  A respected reporter asked a very good question that I had not really thought about:

How did my companies and the entities that I work with fare during that same stretch? 

Good question!

At one of the home building companies, we sold 21 more homes in 2009 than 2008.  The industry uses three jobs per home built for job creation purposes, so that is an increase of 63 jobs year over year.

A second building company sold 6 additional homes in 2009 over 2008.  Add another 18 jobs.

We started one new company in the green energy area that accounts for at least three full time jobs at this point.  It is growing fast and likely will add 10-20 jobs over the next 18 months.

The not-for-profit schools that I work with grew significantly and conservatively added 35 new positions in order to serve the additional students.  We are expecting significant growth here also.

In another new endeavor, I have one computer programmer hired fulltime, developing software to fill a market need.  It remains to be seen if this will grow and employ more people but, if successful, this will become a company where the profits are donated to charitable entities as well.

Creating jobs is a lot of work but can be done even in a slower economy.  That is demonstrated, not only by our companies, but also by the fact that all but two metropolitan areas in America are doing better than Milwaukee.  This city deserves better and so does Wisconsin.  

All in all, I thought the question was a good one and warranted an answer.  Let us know your thoughts.

Comments

Rhonda Hoffmann

Finally. The difference between theory and practice; talk and action. I have been looking for actual, factual comparisons between you and Scott Walker, and also Tom Barret, to some degree. Thank you for providing this information. I hope the other two will do the same, but I am not counting on that. I suspect they'd prefer not to focus on thier failures.

Joe Trovato

Milwaukee needs some real leadership to get back on its feet again. It is too great of a city to sit back and just watch it fall apart in front of us. Milwaukee has the potential to be one of America's greatest cities, but the answers and prosperity come in the form of job creation, not adding new taxes to an already overtaxed business climate. We need to lure new businesses into the city by offering the incentive of lower taxes and less government interference where businesses can flourish, make money, and hire more people, who then go and spend the money they earn at their jobs on all of the amenities that make Milwaukee such a great city.