attitudes about the economy will likely persist. For "Here& Now".
I'm Nathan Denzin in Madison. >> From the cost of things to
wages and jobs ahead of Labor Day, we check in on the annual
State of working Wisconsin report with UW-Madison economist
and associate director of its High Road Strategy Center, Laura
Dresser, and thanks a lot for being here.
Thanks for having me. >> So in a nutshell, what is the
overall state of working Wisconsin?
this year, I think, is a continuation from in the
recovery from the pandemic shutdowns. We know we've been
seeing high job production that's still true. 25,000 new
jobs across the last year in the state of Wisconsin, highest ever
number of jobs. We have low unemployment rates and we had a
strong wage increase at the median last year.
>> So what's responsible for this growth in jobs as you
describe? ticking along. Well, I know
there's a lot of discussion about whether people think the
economy is good, but from the perspective of workers, where a
high demand in the labor market means that people can get into
the labor market and it means that people when they hold jobs,
they can ask more of those jobs. They have a little better
position, bargaining position. That's all true in this labor
market. And it's a continuation of what we've seen coming out of
that. The severe lockdown, the shutdowns.
But is there any sense that it is slowing down?
>> You know, I think there's you know obviously that last month's
National Jobs data was softer than expected. There was a
recent revision to the total national numbers on jobs. So the
rate, the pace of job growth is slowing. We're still adding jobs
and the unemployment rates have been pretty steady and very low,
like pretty steady below 3% in the state and or around 3%.
That's really low in employment. And that and so that bargaining
position for workers like there are there are clouds on the
horizon. A lot of concern about what comes next. And I think
that's what everybody is looking at, future job production and
that unemployment rate to change. But for now like very
solid. We'll take solid year. We'll take now.
>> So again what does that do for wages. What are the kind of
specifics on that. >> Yeah. So probably everybody
remembers 2022 was a year of really high inflation. That
means that wage increases in that year did not keep up with
the cost of living. So we'd had steady wage growth. And then a
step back in last year's report this year, we had the strongest
one year median wage growth that we've seen. And that's all
inflation adjusted. So the one we wages increase at the median
by $0.97 an hour or almost a dollar an hour. That's the
strongest we've ever seen. It ties with a 2019. But but that's
really strong step forward in wages. And we're very near the
2021 peak in wages. So strong wage growth because workers are
bargaining for more. Employers are needing to pay more to find
workers in these tight labor markets.
our minimum wage sits at $7.25 an hour.
>> Yeah, the state of Wisconsin is, you know, the labor market
infrastructure, the kind of wage standards we set are being
really left behind by neighboring states. It's above
$10 an hour in both Michigan and Minnesota, $13 an hour for the
minimum in Illinois. Wisconsin is just out of touch in terms of
setting the standard in our labor market for the base.
>> You also describe in your report that there is a gender
pay gap that persists. >> Yeah, it's you know, we've
seen some shrinking in inequality. One of one of the
exciting things about this recent period is lower wage
workers have made bigger gains. And we know that even over the
last 40 years, women have made gains relative to men. There's
still a substantial pay gap. And it's especially extreme for
black women, for Hispanic women whose workers are whose wages
are 25 and 33% below white men's wages.
>> So you your report also suggests that there are ways to
make these gains durable, as you say. How in your mind do you do
that? already mentioned is, is the
minimum wage raising the minimum wage and trying to get the kind
of floor under the labor market up more in touch with
neighboring states, up more in touch with the cost of living.
Living would really matter for workers. I think restoring
rights to collective collective action, collective bargaining,
restoring union rights in this state really matters for workers
ability to, you know, pursue unions and to raise wages. And
then I think the other thing we see in this state, we used to
have a very strong relative advantage in women's work. Women
were much more likely to work in Wisconsin than in the rest of
the nation. And that is shrinking our relative advantage
in women's work. And so I think really attending to the question
of our early care and education infrastructure, investing in
that infrastructure, both so that the workers who are largely
women who work in it, can earn decent wages and so that
families who all rely on it, but especially moms who carry the