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Two comparisons, both shown. The national basis ranks Waukesha 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.

Pillar breakdown — national percentile ranks

What this means for Waukesha County

Waukesha County scores 46.1 on the national CAERI basis — 1982nd of 3,142 scored U.S. counties, placing it in the 25th–50th band nationally by percentile, with a medium-confidence rating. Within Wisconsin it ranks 26th of 72 counties (65th 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 96th national percentile. The largest concentrations of locally estimated employment in high-exposure occupations are customer service representatives, sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, except technical and scientific products, office clerks, general. The share of exposed-industry jobs held by workers under 25 is 7% — well below 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 26% (below the state median) — a higher share historically means slower workforce adjustment when industries restructure. Fiscal sensitivity ranks at the 31st 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, 15% 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. Sales taxes are a minimal share of own-source revenue here, leaving property values and shared revenue as the channels that matter. 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.

Largest locally-estimated employment in high-exposure occupations

Across all 214 high-exposure occupations (top quartile of ensemble exposure) with estimated local employment, Waukesha County has an estimated 91,754 jobs — 34.9% of county employment — carrying an estimated $7B annual wage bill in high-exposure work. The five largest:

Age structure of exposed-industry employment

Cite this page

Machine-readable: this county's JSON · national dataset download and data dictionary on the methodology page.

Nearby and comparable counties

Pepin Co., WI (in state)St. Croix Co., WI (in state)Eau Claire Co., WI (in state)Cheyenne Co., NE (similar score)Warren Co., TN (similar score)Putnam Co., TN (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.

Sources & provenance