Governor Walker got ideas from business leaders during a jobs forum in Wausau Monday about how the state can create more jobs in the private sector.
“Every one of these is helpful in the sense that it affirms things and at the same time it brings up new ideas,” Walker said. The governor has hosted previous forums in Green Bay, La Crosse, Eau Claire, Milwaukee, and Madison.
Twenty local business executives, who represented the education, health care, manufacturing and financial sectors, attended the forum at Northcentral Technical College. They weighed in on issues like increasing access to capital, giving Wisconsin companies a preference in state contracts and helping match skilled workers with available jobs.
Officials from various state agencies, including the Department of Natural Resources, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Workforce Development, joined Walker for the forum.
Walker campaigned on a promise to create 250,000 new jobs in the state by the end of his first term in office in 2015. But the state revenue department reported Friday that Wisconsin will not meet the governor’s goal – only creating an estimated 136,000 jobs in the private sector by 2014.
“I want to hit that goal not just because it’s a promise made,” Walker said. “Because in the end, it’s one of those where we’ve got too many people looking for work right now.”
Matt Lehman-WSAU
