WISCONSIN — Wisconsin’s population is expected to decrease by nearly 200,000 by the year 2050, according to new projections by the Wisconsin Department of Administration.

That’s about a 3% decrease from 2020.

It comes as no surprise to Dale Knapp, director of Forward Analytics, whose 2021 report found the state’s 10-year growth rate to be the slowest on record — 3.6%.

“We saw this coming,” Knapp said.

But Knapp said focusing on the overall decline masks a lot of what’s going on, starting with estimates between 2020 and 2030.

“What you actually see is declines in 53 of the 72 counties and that number grows to 57 in between 2030 and 2040,” he said, referencing the DOA report.

Officials attribute the projected decrease to the state’s shrinking fertility rates, which have lingered below 2.0 for the last decade. Researchers say in order for population to remain relatively stable, rates need to be between 2.04 and 2.09.

That low fertility rate is reflected in the uneven age distribution across the state. This factor is part of what affects the future population.

According to the report, the two largest age groups in 2010 were ages 45-49 and 50-54. As the years pass and those groups age, this “population bump” moves forward into different age groups, and by 2050, what remains of it falls into the 85 and older category.

Knapp said one concerning piece from the 2020 to 2030 projections is the decline in working-age populations, or those between the ages of 25-64. He said the DOA’s numbers exceed the own projections he’s used over the years.

“I was hoping that I would be overly pessimistic and wrong and that things look much better, but their numbers actually point to that number being down closer to 200,000 over the decade,” he said.

Knapp said this has major implications for the impending worker shortage.

“Unless something changes, it’s going to get much worse,” he said.

At least 31 counties in the state show a projected population decline of 15% or more between 2020 and 2050, according to the data.

“These companies, they can’t afford, essentially a 15% decline in their workforce — that’s just untenable,” Knapp said.

Not all areas have a murky population outlook.

Dane County — a hub for the state’s main university and Capitol — is one region that shows a large boom in population from 2020 to 2050, with a projected 39% increase. Another far western county has a similar projection; Trempealeau County has a 34% projected increase.

Some counties aren’t as lucky. Milwaukee County, where Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson has set a goal of having one million residents, shows a 9% decline from 2020 to 2050, going from 939,489 to 851,605 residents. That’s not new, as Milwaukee has had continued struggles, with one estimate showing it shrinking at twice the rate of the 2010s.

Waukesha Couty has a similar decrease of about 7% from 2020 to 2050. In the projection, Adams and Florence counties lead the way in their population declines, with Adams County projected to lose 29% between those years and Florence, a far northeast county in Wisconsin, projected to lose 31%.

Knapp said he hopes these numbers spur some action in the legislature to come up with a way to solve the decline.

Researchers say that for population to increase as in previous decades, it would require “a large unforeseen shift.” Those shifts could come in the form of decreased mortality, increased fertility or migration.

Fertility isn’t an easy aspect to control.

However, Knapp said there are ways the state and local communities may be able to help make it easier to raise a family, such as lower child care costs and more affordable housing options.

Primarily, Knapp said fixing the problem in the next five to 20 years may involve a two-pronged approach related to migration. The first, he said, may be to provide incentives to bring people to the state. The other simply involves marketing what Wisconsin has to offer.

“I think initially, what we have to do is make people aware of what a great state Wisconsin is,” Knapp said.