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Labor Market Pulse
Racine, WI Metro Edition
Focus: IT
Racine IT pay splits: support rates fall, security and engineering climb.
3.30%
Racine County unemployment
Down from 5.2% in Feb 2026, up from 2.7% WI rate
$44,798
Help Desk advertised pay
Down significantly vs. national $53,644 (stable)
$95,817
Cybersecurity Analyst advertised pay
Up significantly locally, up moderately nationally
56 notices / 3,914 workers
Wisconsin WARN notices, 2026
Down 7% from 2025, manufacturing-concentrated
This Month's Takeaways
Help Desk pay is falling locally while national rates hold.
Metro advertised pay for Help Desk/IT Support dropped significantly to $44,798 even as the national median held steady near $53,644. Consider this a signal that local employers face less competitive pressure to retain support staff, making outsourcing or managed-service arrangements for tier-1 support more economically rational now than a year ago.
Cybersecurity and software pay are pulling away from the pack.
Cybersecurity Analyst and Software Engineer advertised pay both moved up significantly in Racine this month, consistent with national trends showing senior cybersecurity roles reaching $400K and mid-level AI engineers up 9.2% year over year. Organizations should evaluate whether current comp structures for these roles still align with a market where specialized talent has options well beyond the metro.
Displaced manufacturing-adjacent workers may not fill IT gaps.
UNFI's warehouse closure and Cree Lighting's 172-person layoff released hundreds of workers into the Racine labor pool, but this talent skews toward logistics and production, not IT skill sets. Headcount planners should not assume local layoff activity eases pressure on infrastructure or security hiring.
Wisconsin's attraction gap, not attrition, is the real constraint.
State research points to a shortfall of roughly 1,500 college-educated arrivals annually, meaning Racine employers cannot easily backfill specialized IT roles through external recruitment. Current conditions suggest internal mobility and upskilling budgets deserve more weight relative to external search spend.
Local Labor Conditions
Racine-area unemployment eased to 3.30% in May 2026 after spiking to 5.2% in February, but the correction masks real disruption — UNFI's Sturtevant warehouse closure and Cree Lighting's 172-person layoff (half its workforce) both concluded by August, pushing displaced logistics and manufacturing talent into a thin local labor pool. Wisconsin's statewide "low-hire, low-fire" pattern holds in Racine: Information sector employment fell statewide even as data science and computer research roles are projected to grow 43-44% over the medium term, signaling a bifurcated market where commodity IT roles stagnate while specialized technical talent stays scarce.
Leadership & Talent Implications
Racine's manufacturing-and-logistics-heavy employer base means most local IT demand sits in support, infrastructure, and administrative functions — exactly the roles facing national wage compression (Help Desk pay down 4.4% locally) while Software Engineer and Cybersecurity Analyst advertised pay climb significantly. That divergence strengthens the case for outsourcing commodity support and network administration work to regional or national providers while reserving scarce internal headcount budget for cloud, security, and data specializations that Racine's thin talent pipeline cannot easily replace. Consider reviewing which infrastructure and support functions could shift to contract or managed-service arrangements before committing to permanent headcount in a metro where college-educated talent attraction remains structurally weak.
