The Economic State of Milwaukee: The City and the Region is designed to give citizens and policymakers a systematic collection of economic information on which to base a judgment about how our economy is performing.

In this report, we have assembled data on over 350 indicators of city and metropolitan area economic health, some stretching as far back as the 1950s, to give a sense of both the long-term and more recent trends in this community. Data has been compiled on key areas of economic well-being: employment, unemployment, and job growth; sectoral trends; income, wages, and earnings; poverty; education; unionization; and minority economic development.

On each of these indicators, the report looks at the city of Milwaukee and metro Milwaukee's performance over time, as well as in comparison to 13 other large, Frostbelt cities and metropolitan areas. In this fashion, we can observe how well Milwaukee's economic performance stacks up against comparable cities and regions.