Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States

🇺🇸 Milwaukee is the largest city in the state of Wisconsin and the fifth-largest city in the Midwestern United States. The seat of Milwaukee County, the city is located on Lake Michigan's south-western shore and was incorporated in 1846. It is the main cultural and economic centre of the Milwaukee metropolitan area, the fourth-most densely populated metropolitan area in the Midwest. Milwaukee has a regional GDP of over $107 billion.

Today, Milwaukee is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the United States, as well as one of the most segregated cities in America. Its history was heavily influenced by German immigrants in the 19th century, and it became well known for its brewing industry. In recent years, Milwaukee has been undergoing its largest construction boom since the 1960s. Major new additions to the city in the past two decades include the Milwaukee Riverwalk, the Wisconsin Center, American Family Field, The Hop (streetcar system), an expansion to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, the Bradley Symphony Center, and Discovery World, as well as major renovations to the UW–Milwaukee Panther Arena. Fiserv Forum opened in late 2018, and hosts sporting events and concerts. Since 1968, Milwaukee has been home to Summerfest, one of the largest music festivals in the world. With regard to education, Milwaukee is home to UW-Milwaukee, Marquette University, MSOE, and several other universities and colleges. The city is home to two major professional sports teams − the Bucks and the Brewers. It is home to several Fortune 500 companies, including Northwestern Mutual, WEC Energy Group, Rockwell Automation, and Harley-Davidson.

Brewing Milwaukee became synonymous with Germans and beer beginning in the 1840s. The Germans had long enjoyed beer and set up breweries when they arrived in Milwaukee. By 1856, there were more than two dozen breweries in Milwaukee, most of them owned and operated by Germans. Besides making beer for the rest of the nation, Milwaukee citizens enjoyed consuming the various beers produced in the city's breweries. As early as 1843, pioneer historian James Buck recorded 138 taverns in Milwaukee, an average of one per forty residents. Today, beer halls and taverns are abundant in the city, but only one of the major breweries—Miller—remains in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee was once the home to four of the world's largest beer breweries (Schlitz, Blatz, Pabst, and Miller), and was the number one beer producing city in the world for many years. As late as 1981, Milwaukee had the greatest brewing capacity in the world. Despite the decline in its position as the world's leading beer producer after the loss of two of those breweries, Miller Brewing Company remains a key employer by employing over 2,200 of the city's workers. Because of Miller's position as the second-largest beer-maker in the U.S., the city remains known as a beer town. The city and surrounding areas are seeing a resurgence in microbreweries, nanobreweries and brewpubs with the craft beer movement. The historic Milwaukee Brewery in "Miller Valley" at 4000 West State Street, is the oldest functioning major brewery in the United States. In 2008, Coors beer also began to be brewed in Miller Valley. This created additional brewery jobs in Milwaukee, but the company's world headquarters moved from Milwaukee to Chicago. In addition to Miller and the heavily automated Leinenkugel's brewery in the old Blatz 10th Street plant, other stand-alone breweries in Milwaukee include Milwaukee Brewing Company, a microbrewery in Walker's Point neighborhood; Lakefront Brewery, a microbrewery in Brewers Hill; and Sprecher Brewery, a German brewery that also brews craft sodas. Since 2015, nearly two dozen craft brewing companies have been established in the city.

Three beer brewers with Wisconsin operations made the 2009 list of the 50 largest beer-makers in the United States, based on beer sales volume. Making the latest big-breweries list from Wisconsin is MillerCoors at No. 2. MillerCoors is a joint venture formed in 2008 by Milwaukee-based Miller Brewing Co. and Golden, Colorado-based Molson Coors Brewing Company. The Minhas Craft Brewery in Monroe, Wisconsin, which brews Huber, Rhinelander and Mountain Crest brands, ranked No. 14 and New Glarus Brewing Company, New Glarus, Wisconsin, whose brands include Spotted Cow, Fat Squirrel and Uff-da, ranked No. 32.

Present economy Milwaukee is the home to the international headquarters of five Fortune 500 companies: Johnson Controls, Northwestern Mutual, Manpower, Rockwell Automation, and Harley-Davidson. Other companies based in Milwaukee include Briggs & Stratton, Brady Corporation, Baird (investment bank), Alliance Federated Energy, Sensient Technologies, Marshall & Ilsley (acquired by BMO Harris Bank in 2010), Hal Leonard, Direct Supply, Wisconsin Energy, Rite-Hite, the American Society for Quality, A. O. Smith, Rexnord, Master Lock, Marcus Corporation, REV Group, American Signal Corporation, GE Healthcare Diagnostic Imaging and Clinical Systems and MGIC Investments. The Milwaukee metropolitan area ranks fifth in the United States in terms of the number of Fortune 500 company headquarters as a share of the population. Milwaukee also has a large number of financial service firms, particularly those specialising in mutual funds and transaction processing systems, and a number of publishing and printing companies. Service and managerial jobs are the fastest-growing segments of the Milwaukee economy, and health care alone makes up 27% of the jobs in the city.