Report shows improvements for Wisconsin workers while shortcomings persist

Wisconsin jobs are at a record number, unemployment is low and low-wage workers have seen their wages rise in 2023, according to the annual State of Working Wisconsin report from the High Road Strategy Center. Here, union steward Sean McCullough interviews a job applicant for the Milwaukee Deer District through the hiring hall operated by the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization (MASH) in 2023. (Photo courtesy of MASH)

Wisconsin workers’ wages are up and the racial and gender gaps they face are smaller, says a new Labor Day report. But the gaps haven’t been eliminated and challenges such as the scarcity and cost of child care continue to keep some in the state who want jobs from joining the workforce.

Those and other trends are mapped in the 2024 edition of The State of Working Wisconsin , released just before the Labor Day weekend by the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Working Wisconsin report examines the economy from the vantage point of how it affects workers. It is issued annually by the center , a nonprofit that researches and promotes solutions to social problems that focus on “shared growth and opportunity, environmental sustainability, and resilient democratic institutions as necessary and achievable complements in human development.”

Recommendations: Unions, minimum wage boost, child care help

Along with good news for Wisconsin workers — strong growth in jobs and wages and low unemployment — the report finds challenges: shrinking union representation, a state minimum wage that hasn’t been raised in more than a decade, and inadequate support for child care that would enable more Wisconsin residents to go to work.

The report recommends restoring union rights to “help workers level the playing field in Wisconsin.”

In 2011, Act 10 stripped Wisconsin public workers of most union rights. Subsequent “right to work” legislation cut financial support for private sector unions, the report explains.

Survey data show unions have become increasingly popular with the public, but in Wisconsin, that popularity hasn’t translated into union growth, according to Laura Dresser, associate director of the High Road Center and the report’s lead author.

“Wisconsin is losing unions faster than any state among our neighbors,” Dresser says. “We’ve gone from well above the national rate to well below in unionization.”

The report also recommends raising Wisconsin’s minimum wage, still the same as the federal wage of $7.25. Surrounding states including Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois have all raised their minimum wages, the report’s authors observe.

“More than 379,000 Wisconsin workers, disproportionately women workers, and disproportionately Black and Brown workers, would get a raise if the minimum wage moved from its current level of $7.25 to $15,” the report says.

And it recommends renewed public investment in child care that “could support care providers, stabilize the sector, and provide relief for families and their employers.”

Wages rise

A spike in inflation that tamped down real wages in 2022 eased considerably in 2023, the most recent year available for state wage data, Dresser says.

In 2023, the median hourly wage adjusted for inflation soared by nearly a dollar an hour from the previous year — far outpacing past wage gains in periods of economic growth over the last 40 years.

“The average annual increase since 1979 was less than a dime a year, so this is really substantial,” Dresser says. Low-wage workers have benefited especially, she adds.

Wage growth has been especially robust for Black and Hispanic women workers — stronger than for white workers of both genders and stronger than for Black and Hispanic men.

“Those gaps are closing across this recovery,” Dresser says. “That is new and sustained” — and unusual, she adds.

But, she cautions, the finding is that “the gaps are closing — not the gaps are gone.”

Dresser says the wage increases of the last couple of years don’t make a minimum wage hike superfluous. Workers on the margins, such as day laborers, are likely to be working for wages at or close to the minimum, she says — and are also more at risk from wage theft from employers.

“Having a strong labor floor and enforcing that really matters,” Dresser says.

Jobs and employment: Growth and gaps

The wage improvements that workers have seen in the last couple of years reflect a period of strong job creation and low unemployment rates. The number of jobs in Wisconsin reached a new high of nearly 3.05 million in June. While the number slipped slightly in July to 3.04 million, it remained nearly 26,000 jobs ahead of July 2023.

Even so, job growth in Wisconsin — after outpacing the U.S. in the first year of recovery from the COVID-19-related slowdown — has lagged slightly behind the national growth, according to the report. Since September 2021 national job growth has risen 3.4%, compared with 1.4% for Wisconsin.

Unemployment has remained low in Wisconsin, hovering around 3% in recent months, but gaps have remained long racial lines: While white unemployment in the state in the first three months of 2024 was 2.3%, for Hispanic workers it was nearly twice as high at 4.4%, and for Black workers it was 6% — more than double the white rate, the report says.

There are also geographic disparities: Unemployment in June was below 2.5% in Lafayette County and above 6% in Menominee County, for example.

Labor participation in Wisconsin exceeds that of the nation, with larger shares of both men and women in the workforce compared with the rest of the country, according to the report.

Nevertheless, the gap between labor force participation for Wisconsin women and for all U.S. women has been getting smaller. In the mid-1990s, 70% of Wisconsin women were in the workforce compared with 60% nationally. By 2023 the difference was cut in half: The participation rate was 62% for Wisconsin women and 57% for women nationally.

Wage gaps by gender also remain, although they’re smaller than 40 years ago. In 1979, Wisconsin women were paid 58 cents for every dollar men were paid. In 2023, that rose to 88 cents on the dollar.

The gaps differ by race and ethnic background. In 2023 white women were paid on average 16% less than white men, while Black women are paid 25% less and Hispanic women 33% less, according to the report.

“These pay gaps demonstrate sustained gender inequality, but also the particularly deep disparities faced by women of color in the state,” the report states.

Child care

Child care is a common thread linking those disparities, the report’s authors conclude.

“The lack of affordable and accessible high-quality early care and education forces parents to pass up work opportunities, work fewer hours, or leave the labor force entirely,” the report states.

Child care wages, historically low, have gone up in recent years, in response to better pay for other jobs such as in retail and fast food. To support those pay increases while holding down the fees families had to pay for care, Wisconsin initiated Child Care Counts, which sent monthly payments to child care providers funded by federal pandemic relief money.

When the state Legislature passed the 2023-25 budget without including a request from Gov. Tony Evers to continue Child Care Counts with state funding, Evers redirected some of the state’s remaining pandemic funds to continue the program into 2025, but with smaller payments.

That has placed a strain on child care providers, but also on the families for whom child care is essential in order to join the workforce.

“Centers are closing, families are leaving,” Dresser says. “Centers have a hard time staffing rooms, so they shut rooms.”

She sees broad benefits from bolstering child care for employers and families, but especially for women.

“You have to think about the care infrastructure in this state,” Dresser says — “investing in affordable child care, which also means investing in the workers who provide it — who are mostly women.”

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