Jason Stein writes in the Wisconsin State Journal that there’s a skilled labor shortage here:

Colleges and training programs aren’t keeping up with the demand for skilled workers in a variety of industries, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development has found. Rough state projections show Wisconsin needs 2,430 registered nurses to enter the work force each year until 2012. But in 2004, only 1,755 nursing graduates took the state exam to become registered nurses.

Wisconsin’s construction industry needs a projected 1,020 new carpenters a year, but only 340 carpentry graduates are coming out of the state’s apprenticeship and tech college programs.

Meanwhile, Joel Dresang writes in the Milwuakee Journal-Sentinel that we don’t have enough jobs for graduates.

“In many cases, the jobs aren’t here,” says Karen Stauffacher, assistant dean and director of the Business Career Center at UW-Madison.

As of last week, more than a third of the job offers accepted by the business school’s spring graduates were with companies based in Minneapolis (18% of the accepted offers) and Chicago (17%).

Only 31% of accepted offers were from Wisconsin employers, mostly in Madison (13%) and Milwaukee (8%). On average, the Chicago employers offered salaries $10,000 higher than in Madison, and Minneapolis companies offered about $7,000 more.