Working people had little to celebrate on Labor Day, according to a new report from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS).
The State of Working Wisconsin 2010,COWS’ eighth edition of the report, presents a grim economic picture both in the short and longer-term.
"The economy -- which really collapsed starting in September 2008 -- hasn't come back in any meaningful way for working people in the state," said COWS' associate director Laura Dresser in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio. “We still have high rates of unemployment, we've lost a lot of jobs, and I think workers that don't have jobs are feeling pretty desperate, and workers that do have jobs many of them feel pretty nervous."
Among the findings from this year’s report:
- Wisconsin has 155,200 fewer jobs than it did at the start of the recession. Wisconsin has lost one in twenty jobs (5 percent), posting the worst job loss of any of the last four recessions.
- Unemployment doubled over the course of the Great Recession, and the state’s black and Latino workers have suffered the most. Unemployment now stands at 7.8 percent (July 2010). Underemployment, which includes those who’ve given up looking for work or are working part-time because they can’t find full-time work, accounts for fully 15 percent of the labor force. These numbers are much higher for the state’s African American and Hispanic workers.
- Wage growth has been weak, bringing the Wisconsin hourly median to $15.87. Adjusting for inflation, the current Wisconsin median wage is less than $1.00 per hour higher than it was in 1979, despite substantial productivity growth over the last 30 years.
- Wisconsin continues to experience substantial wage inequality by gender, race, and ethnicity. Women in the state earn 19 percent less than men, bringing in $0.81 for every dollar men earn. The black/white wage gap is 20 percent. And for Hispanics, the wage gap is 25 percent.
- More than one in five Wisconsin workers holds a poverty-wage job (less than $10.46 per hour), suffering low wages and weak benefits.
Despite the dismal outlook, COWS remains optimistic about Wisconsin’s ability to set a new and more equitable course.
The state has already taken important steps to increase security for working people, and COWS urges policy makers to continue to build and innovate.
Visit www.cows.org/soww to read the report or executive summary.