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COWS report: Wis. economy uncertain
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by Ryan Masse
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
The Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) released its “The State of Working Wisconsin 2004” report Sunday with mixed findings on the condition of the state’s economy.
Wisconsin has experienced strong job growth so far in 2004, including 14,000 jobs added to the much-maligned manufacturing industry. In addition, per capita income has been growing at a rate exceeding the national average.
The strong job growth in Wisconsin reflects similar trends nationally in recent months. In his speech in West Allis Friday, President Bush announced 144,000 jobs were added to the economy in August, plus 60,000 to revised figures for June and July.
Those gains should be closely inspected, though, and not necessarily be credited to Bush, according to Liz Sanger, chair of the College Democrats.
“It’s great that we’re getting jobs back, but they’re coming back too slowly, and they’re coming back as worse jobs,” Sanger said. “We’re seeing jobs with fewer hours and less-skilled tasks. All those people who lost jobs are still hurting because they’re not getting the same jobs back.”
The COWS report finds less-encouraging signs as well. Despite the job growth, employment levels have only recovered to March 2001 levels, and the 14,000 manufacturing jobs added comes after 75,000 such jobs were lost between March 2001 and January 2004.
“There’s some good recent news on employment, but the bigger picture is frankly pretty grim,” Joel Rogers, COWS director, said in a press release. “We’re just not growing income in this state fast enough, or attracting enough investment, or maintaining our share of high-end jobs.”
University of Wisconsin students might be able to take solace in the findings for college graduates — college-educated men in Wisconsin experienced a 24 percent increase in real wages from 1979-2003, while women’s wages jumped by 40 percent over the same time. During this period, men without college degrees witnessed declines in real wages, and women experienced only small gains.
But evidence of the “brain drain,” the inability of the state to attract and maintain highly educated workers, remains. The percentage of the state’s workforce holding a college degree increased from 22.8 to 24.4 from 1990-2003, but nationally the percentage increased at more than double Wisconsin’s rate.
The report found broad indications of inequities between black and white residents of the state. Black children were six times more likely to live in poverty than white children in 2000, which ranked as the biggest differential among all 50 states. Meanwhile, blacks in Wisconsin were four times more likely than whites to be unemployed, also worst in the nation.
The report offers several recommendations toward establishing a higher-end economy in Wisconsin, as well as rectifying the racial inequity gap. Among the recommendations include strategies to increase the competitiveness of high-road manufacturing firms, raising of the state minimum wage, and job training programs in Milwaukee.
