Two comparisons, both shown. The national basis ranks Dane County against every scored U.S. county — its percentile band above is a relative national standing, not a condition. The in-state basis ranks it against Wisconsin's other counties (rank and percentile only — bands aren't meaningful within a single state). A county can stand out in its own state while sitting mid-pack nationally. Neither is a forecast.
Dane County scores 56.6 on the national CAERI basis — 854th of 3,142 scored U.S. counties, placing it in the 50th–75th band nationally by percentile, with a high-confidence rating. Within Wisconsin it ranks 2nd of 72 counties (98th in-state percentile). The score summarizes how concentrated local employment is in AI-exposed occupations against the economy's measured capacity to adapt; these are relative-standing bands, not a projection of local job change.
Direct occupational exposure stands at the 99th national percentile. The largest concentrations of locally estimated employment in high-exposure occupations are software developers, customer service representatives, office clerks, general. The share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers under 25 is 10% — near the state median of 10%; research on AI-era payrolls finds early-career roles in exposed work are where hiring patterns shift first, so this share indicates how soon exposure could be felt, not how large it is.
The share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers 55 and over is 21% (well below the state median) — a higher share historically means slower workforce adjustment when industries restructure. Fiscal sensitivity ranks at the 73rd state percentile. In Wisconsin the transmission runs through a uniformly taxed property base — the state constitution's uniformity clause bars taxing commercial property at different rates than homes, so softness in commercial values shifts burden across the whole levy — under levy limits tied to net new construction, which constrain how much lost value a community can recapture; and through state shared revenue, 18% of general revenue here (well below the state median). Since 2023, the county and municipal aid appropriation is indexed to state sales-tax collections, so it moves with statewide consumption, not only local conditions. County sales taxes contribute 7% of own-source revenue and track taxable retail activity. Wisconsin local governments levy no local income tax. All county occupation figures on this page are model-based ESTIMATES with the confidence rating shown above.
Across all 214 high-exposure occupations (top quartile of ensemble exposure) with estimated local employment, Dane County has an estimated 153,441 jobs — 38.8% of county employment — carrying an estimated $12B annual wage bill in high-exposure work. The five largest:
| Occupation | Est. local employment* | Exposure (0–1) | Median wage (area) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software Developers | 7,554 | 0.65 | $104,670 |
| Customer Service Representatives | 7,367 | 0.42 | $46,340 |
| Office Clerks, General | 5,745 | 0.44 | $45,220 |
| Accountants and Auditors | 4,795 | 0.48 | $80,490 |
| Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive | 4,613 | 0.50 | $50,340 |
| Dane County | Wisconsin median | |
|---|---|---|
| Share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers under 25 (entry rung) | 9.6% | 9.7% |
| Share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers 55+ (adjustment friction) | 20.6% | 28.7% |
The county number above averages over every community in it. City- and place-level exposure profiles, employer-mix detail, trend monitoring, and peer benchmarking are part of the CAERI subscription for local governments and regional organizations.
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StrataHelm. (2026). Dane County, Wisconsin — Community AI Exposure & Resilience Index (CAERI v0.3.1) [Data set]. Retrieved August 4, 2026, from https://stratahelm.com/counties/wisconsin/dane/
“Dane County, Wisconsin — CAERI.” StrataHelm, 2026, stratahelm.com/counties/wisconsin/dane/. Accessed 4 August 2026.
StrataHelm. “Dane County, Wisconsin — Community AI Exposure and Resilience Index (v0.3.1).” 2026. https://stratahelm.com/counties/wisconsin/dane/
Machine-readable: this county's JSON · national dataset download and data dictionary on the methodology page.
Calumet Co., WI (in state)Lafayette Co., WI (in state)Green Co., WI (in state)Fremont Co., ID (similar score)Rockingham Co., VA (similar score)Tooele Co., UT (similar score)
Links point to the economically nearest counties (in-state, and similar national score). County-level geographic adjacency is not part of the public reference data, so proximity here is by rank, not by shared border.
| Layer | Sources (vintage) |
|---|---|
| Employment & occupation structure | cbp_wi_county_naics4: Census CBP 2023 API (NAICS2017 classification; PAYANN in $1,000s; noise infusion G/H/J bands, D = withheld -> NaN); county_soc_estimates.meta_wi.json; exposure_scores: 2026-07-04; matrix_staffing_patterns: 2024-34 National Employment Matrix (base year 2024) |
| AI-exposure research base | Anthropic Economic Index; Felten, Raj & Seamans (AIOE); Eloundou et al. — combined as a weighted ensemble with cross-source disagreement feeding the confidence rating |
| Capacity, buffer & fiscal | govfin_wi_county_revenue_mix: 2022 Census of Governments, Survey of Government Finances; lodes_wi_county_flows: LEHD LODES8 OD 2023, JT00/S000; sources: wi_main, wi_aux, ia_aux, il_aux, mn_aux; qwi_wi_county_naics3_age: Census QWI (qwi/sa), quarters ['2024-Q4', '2025-Q1', '2025-Q2', '2025-Q3'], sex=0, ownercode=A05 (private), 96 NAICS-3 + '00' all-industry |
| Methodology | CAERI v0.3.1 · public methodology · scores generated 2026-07-12 · page generated 2026-08-04 |
| License | Free to reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license: reuse or redistribute with attribution to “StrataHelm CAERI” and a link back to this page. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |