On Madison’s East Washington Avenue, there is a low brick-and-glass building that most drivers pass by without giving it a second glance. The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development is housed in the State Labor Building, GEF-1. Although it affects more lives in the state than nearly any other government agency, it is rarely discussed outside of unemployment season.
The DWD, as most those who deal with it refer to it, takes care of the issues that no one wants to consider until they are absolutely necessary. workers’ compensation in the event of an occupational injury. When a factory closes, unemployment benefits are paid. Complaints of discrimination. placements for apprentices. Although it is inherently bureaucratic, its background is more fascinating than its name implies.
Governor Jeremiah Rusk pushed for it almost as an afterthought in a speech about farm reporting, and it began as a small bureau tracking labor and crop statistics in 1883. It was unimaginable that it would eventually oversee the predecessor program to Social Security. The first head of the Social Security Administration was Arthur Altmeyer, a statistician from Wisconsin who contributed to the creation of the state’s groundbreaking unemployment law in the 1930s. According to reports, Franklin Roosevelt referred to him as the “father” of the entire initiative. It may seem odd to link a national safety net to a tiny Madison office, but that is essentially what took place.
It’s common for Wisconsin to be first. The Supreme Court upheld the first state workers’ compensation law. Neils Ruud received the first unemployment insurance check in 1936 for fifteen dollars. He later sold it for ten dollars more because he thought it would be significant to history. Long before the majority of the nation was even considering it, the first state outlawed sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace in 1982. There is a perception that Wisconsin handles labor laws similarly to how other states handle football rivalries, which is something to be proud of.
Currently, the department employs about 1,600 people across divisions that deal with equal rights enforcement, vocational rehabilitation, unemployment insurance, and apprenticeship programs. Its budget is more than $700 million. It’s simple to read those figures and feel nothing. However, somewhere in those numbers is a teenager beginning an apprenticeship the week they graduate from high school, earning a paycheck while learning a trade that most of their classmates have never considered, or someone filing a weekly unemployment claim from a kitchen table.
The fact that a large portion of the agency’s operations take place outside of the Madison building is less evident but perhaps more telling. A Mobile Career Lab, which is essentially a job center on wheels, travels the state and makes appearances in small towns that lack the population to sustain a permanent office. Although it’s a minor detail, it illustrates how the organization has had to adjust to an aging, dispersed workforce that isn’t always close to a city.
It is more difficult to determine whether the department keeps up with the real direction of Wisconsin’s economy. Manufacturing has decreased. Preconceived notions about the location of jobs have been disrupted by remote work. The organization, which closed almost all of its local offices in the 1990s to become entirely telephone-based, is now dealing with a workforce that demands instantaneous, online, and personalized service. It has previously managed reinvention. For the time being, it’s unclear if it will succeed once more.
