The Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan “think-and-do tank” based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently released its biennial State of Working Wisconsin, a snapshot of jobs, wages, poverty, income and job quality in Wisconsin.

According to COWS’s research, the picture that emerges is fairly grim. The long national recession that started in December 2007 and deepened sharply late last year has doubled Wisconsin’s unemployment rate to 9.0 percent and cost the state nearly 140,000 jobs, including over 66,000 in manufacturing, more than an eighth of manufacturing employment, coming on top of long-term wage stagnation.

The median hourly wage in Wisconsin, now below the national level at $15.48, is only 32 cents higher than in 1979, despite a near doubling of worker productivity since then.

COWS researchers note that there is some good news in this year’s report. Wisconsin has made “impressive” efforts to shore up working families amid this decline, citing the repeated extension of Badger Care, for example, as an achievement and an important buffer for the most vulnerable in the state. Wisconsin has increased the state minimum wage, and the study also cites the efforts to “plug holes and smooth transitions” in education and career paths as well as improving the employer linkage needed for any effective education and training system. And for those seeking cold comfort, the study notes, the state’s recent losses in manufacturing are slightly less than those of other states in the region.

Job loss

Wisconsin has lost 137,100 jobs since December 2007, nearly five percent of its job base at that time. More than half this loss has occurred in 2009. The COWS study does note that the worst of the most recent downturn may now be behind us.

After a monthly average loss of 18,650 jobs during the October 2008 to April 2009 period, employment has remained flat for a few months. That job loss has stagnated recently is a welcome relief for hard hit communities and workers in the state, though the effects of the recession have been “severe and damaging.” The downturn starting in 2007 already rivals the great “rustbelt recession” of the early 1980s in its employment effect, says the study’s authors, and exceeds it and all intervening recessions in its length.

Recent job losses have been particularly severe in manufacturing and construction. Since December 2007, Wisconsin has lost 66,100 or 13 percent of its manufacturing jobs, and the construction industry has lost 19,600 jobs or 16 percent. While manufacturing job loss slowed in April and May 2009, jobs dropped again in June and July. Construction spiked upward in April and May, its first increase in a year, but then fell off again in May through July. Of major sectors, only education and health services, most heavily dependent on public spending, show significant gains since 2007.

For manufacturing, the present job decline, which started in 2007, comes on top of a massive 2001 to 2003 hit to manufacturing employment from which the state never recovered, say COWS researchers. Since 2000, the state has lost more than 25 percent of its manufacturing employment, some 160,000 jobs.

Does manufacturing still matter? Yes, it does, even in a post-industrial economy. The study authors note that manufacturing is an important source of income and innovation. It still overwhelmingly dominates non-energy trade with other nations. In Wisconsin, which has more of its workforce in manufacturing than any other state (16 percent), manufacturing is a particularly important source of employment and income. It also provides some of the best-paying non-managerial jobs in the state, especially for workers without four-year college degrees. Wisconsin’s overall manufacturing sector has generally held up better and is more diverse than those found in neighboring states.

The entire State of Working Wisconsin report from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy can be accessed online at  www.cows.org/pdf/rp-SOWWupdate09.pdf.

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