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>> The monthly U.S. jobs
report out today shows

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encouraging news for the
economy, adding 162,000

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jobs, keeping the
unemployment rate steady at

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4.1%. In Wisconsin, the
state of working Wisconsin

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is mixed. According to a
report by the same name

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from the High Road Strategy
Center at UW-Madison, Laura

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Dresser is an economist and
associate director at the

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center. And Laura, thanks a
lot for being here.

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>> I'm delighted to be here.
>> So how do our job

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numbers stack up and how
have they trended since

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your last Labor Day report?
>> Yeah, it's been a really

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rocky time for the economy
is a great report today

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from the national level.
But on net, the national

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labor market has barely
grown since January of 2025.

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And Wisconsin, as of the
data that came out last

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month, Wisconsin's total
job base had actually

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fallen and was slightly
below where it had been in

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January of 2025.
>> So your report shows

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median wages have grown
steadily. So part of the

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mix that we're talking
about now, sitting at just

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over $26 an hour. But what
stands out in that stat.

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>> That stats interesting
because the median it's

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great to see that going up
because it's going up

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faster than inflation. It's
been steadily going up

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faster than inflation for
most of the last ten years,

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except for 2022, when
inflation was really high.

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So that's a great stat on
that sense. But there's a

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lot of disparities hidden
underneath the median. And

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so we look in the report to
see what's going on and

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some of the gaps between,
for example, the lowest

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wage workers and the
highest wage workers

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continue to shrink a little
bit because of the

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tightness of this labor
market and the way that

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lower wage workers have
moved forward in wages

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faster than higher wage
workers.

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>> And there's also some
kind of demographic gaps.

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>> Yeah, for sure. There's
a big gender gap in wages.

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People are familiar with
that, though, over the last

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40 years, which we document
in this, men's wages have

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have only risen a little.
Women's wages have come

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quite substantially up. So
the gender gap is closed,

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has closed over the last 40
years. And even over the

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last little bit. But other
gaps are large and have

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grown, especially racial
gaps. Black white disparity,

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Black, Hispanic white
disparity has grown quite

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substantially.
people are hyper focused on,

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that being inflation. You
say there's concern that

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inflation could wipe out
wage gains of 2026. How so?

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>> Yeah, that's even true
in the the national report

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from today, inflation the
rate of inflation is higher

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than the rate of wage
growth. This is what

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happened in 2022. Wages
workers wages went up in

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nominal terms. But the cost
of living just wiped that

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right out. That looks like
what we're heading into for

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2026. So while we got a
high in 2025 and that's

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great news, 2026 looks much
less likely that that will

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be a strong gain and
possible that it will be a

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loss because of the high
inflation.

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>> As to affordability, you
report that 1 in 3

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households in Wisconsin
cannot afford basic things.

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You describe this as as
nothing new, but is it

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about the cost of living
per se, or is it about the

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wages?
>> Yeah, I think it's

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really important to see
both of those things in

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balance. I think when we
are are focused on the cost

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of living, like we see the
prices go up, especially

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recently of energy, gas,
utilities. That makes folks

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focus on the cost of living.
But in the background, the

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suppression of wages, the
long term kind of under the

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rates of economic growth,
wage stagnation that this

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nation has had, you know,
even this last five years

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of growth have not gotten
us back to to kind of

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moving ahead as the economy
moves ahead. And if it was

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the questions of the
questions of affordability

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would be wiped out by
having better job.

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>> Laura Dresser we leave
>> Thanks for having me.

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>> As to the rising cost of
energy, many people want to