The Marquette Law School Poll found overwhelming support for a state budget surplus bill that failed to pass in the Wisconsin Legislature — pollster Charles Franklin said this support crossed party lines. Scott Hodek, an economist with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, said the job market is cooling but new graduates should be able to navigate the hiring terrain. Attorney Bryna Godar said a lawsuit against immigration detainers in Wisconsin turns on state statutes guiding the authority of county sheriffs to comply with ICE.

Charles Franklin
Director, Marquette Law School Poll

• A Marquette Law School Poll released May 26 shows 80% of Wisconsin adults support the deal between Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Tony Evers that would have used surplus state budget dollars to reduce property taxes, increase school funding and give out tax rebates. That bill failed to pass, however, after extended negotiations among lawmakers. Franklin said respondents liked what was included in the proposal.
• Franklin: “I think the fundamental thing is that it gives something that everybody wants at least a piece of. In our other polling this year, we’ve seen concern about reducing property taxes is high, with funding for special education is a 70% in favor of that. And who doesn’t want a check for $300 or $600 to a couple? So there are popular elements there. I think the other thing that’s less obvious is that this is a kind of old-fashioned compromise where everybody got something, and it’s all about the good things you’re getting rather than the bad things. The conflict in politics and in the Capitol may have made it hard for that compromise to carry over in the actual votes, where you saw both some Republicans and all Democrats in the Senate voting no.”

Scott Hodek
Economist, Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development

• Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was at 3.5% as of April 2026, lower than the national average. Hodek says the economy is slowing, but employment opportunities in the state remain stable as more people retire, allowing for new job seekers to get hired.
• Hodek: “We’re seeing a lot of growth in health care, and that makes sense with an aging population, but also with retirements. We’re seeing a lot of growth in construction as well. And you might look at construction and say, “OK, well, that’s mostly manual labor,” and there is a lot of that, but it’s not always the case as well. There’s skilled trades like electricians and plumbers, there’s machine operators, and then you’ve got the larger companies that do require accountants and IT. So, you do have a lot of different occupations mixed in these fields that have been doing well. But also, you know, if you look at manufacturing over the last few years, it’s been a downward trend in employment. Honestly, throughout the past decades, we’ve seen staggered drops in employment in manufacturing, which we see nationally as well. This is a kind of a developed world sort of trend. But what we do see is that there’s still difficulty hiring into manufacturing as well, and we’re looking at a ton of employment in Wisconsin, and a ton of output and contribution to our gross domestic product here. So there are a lot of positions there that are open as well, but we don’t necessarily think about that sometimes as job seekers. Like, is this industry growing? If not, should I not apply there? And the truth is there’s so many retirements across a lot of these different industries that it’s more a matter of thinking of finding kind of the occupations that fit right.”

Bryna Godar
Staff attorney, University of Wisconsin Law School State Democracy Research Initiative

• A lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Wisconsin and Voces de la Frontera against sheriffs in Brown, Marathon, Kenosha, Sauk and Walworth counties over ICE detainers, also called immigration holds, could be heard by either the Wisconsin Supreme Court or a federal court depending on pending rulings. Between October 2021 and June 2025, ICE sent more than 3,300 detainer requests seeking to have sheriffs hold jail inmates who otherwise would be released for 48 hours so immigration officials could pick them up. Godar explained the lawsuit’s arguments opposing the holds.
• Godar: “The petitioners in this case are arguing that that results in unlawful detention of individuals past when they would typically be released. And that can have significant impacts for individuals potentially dealing with child care or dealing with missing work. This can apply to people who are not just at the end of a criminal sentence, but also in pretrial detention — so who might otherwise be detained for a relatively short time. Those additional couple of days can have a significant impact. And there are also concerns that cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE can erode trust in local communities with law enforcement, and lead to underreporting of crimes and less of a close relationship with the immigration community.”

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