The 2020 Census shows the cities of Manitowoc and Two Rivers both lost population.
A listener posed the question to Manitowoc City Council President Eric Sitkiewitz on WOMT’s Be My Guest program, “How are the expanding businesses going to fill openings when current employers can’t find employees?”
“That’s something I was talking about quite a bit in terms of the outflow of people from the city of Manitowoc to work in Sheboygan, Green Bay, and the Valley,” Sitkiewitz said in response. “I don’t want to speak for the businesses themselves, but obviously, they’re looking at the data-the available workforce and they feel confident in making tens of millions of dollars of investments into their facilities to create the jobs. So, they think there’s an available workforce or the ability to have one here.”
Sitkiewitz also explained that a developer who’s constructing an 81-unit apartment building downtown believes they can fill them.
“Nobody creates jobs they want unfilled or nobody builds an apartment building they want to sit empty,” he stated. “So there’s an optimism out there that says Manitowoc is primed for growth and a population increase, or at least mitigate with those already leaving the city (to work) on a daily basis.”
The city council president went on to say that with our rent or property values less than neighboring communities like Green Bay and Sheboygan, people have a tendency to want to live here and work in other places.
