Year: 2024

And with increasing focus in schools to be “college ready,” the Forward Academy is set to have a broader focus on all career paths, helping students prepare for a labor market that UW-Madison Associate Professor Laura Dresser said is filled with opportunity.

A recent report revealed that CEOs at Wisconsin’s 25 largest publicly traded companies make hundreds or thousands more than their workers do. We talk with an expert on labor about the disparity and what it means for the economy.

Laura Dresser, a clinical associate professor and associate director for UW-Madison think tank High Road Strategy Center, says this trend supports the notion that U.S. workers are increasingly interested in unions.

In this episode of Capitol Gains, hosts Matt Posner and James McIntyre sit down with University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Joel Rogers, a leading advocate for high road development. They explore how local governments can foster equitable growth through sustainable infrastructure, workforce development, and democratic participation. Joel shares insights on the challenges cities face when financing resilience projects and how to break down silos between finance, resilience, and other departments to create long-term solutions.

The workers who’ve fared the best in recent years were the state’s lowest earners, whose wage growth has outpaced Wisconsin’s highest earners, according to a recent report from the High Road Strategy Center, a worker-focused economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The economy and inflation have been top issues in this presidential election year. But a new report suggests that Wisconsin workers are doing relatively well and even exceeding expectations, despite inflation.

The report released by the High Road Strategy Center at UW-Madison, found rising wages and declining unemployment in Wisconsin.

“The labor market is strong in the sense that we’ve produced a lot of jobs —25,000 jobs over the past year—more today than in the past,” says Laura Dresser, associate director of the center.

In the child care sector specifically, unions are an anomaly, said Laura Dresser, a labor economist and associate director of the UW-Madison think tank High Road Strategy Center.

“Child care unions are really rare in Wisconsin … and unions are rare in child care nationally as well,” Dresser said.

A study by the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found the state’s job market hit record levels in the second quarter and the inflation-adjusted median hourly wage has increased by 97 cents.

Laura Dresser, associate director of the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison and the report’s co-author, said the increase in the median wage is just making up for the period inflation ran ahead of earnings in 2022.

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff speaks with UW-Madison labor economist and High Road Strategy Center associate director Laura Dresser. Dresser speaks with Ruff about geographic disparities, union impacts, and gender disparities.

Wages for the lowest-paid workers in Wisconsin have risen faster than pay for higher earners in recent years, but workers still face challenges.

That’s according to the new “State of Working Wisconsin” report from the High Road Strategy Center, an economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The report is released annually around Labor Day to provide insights into how workers are doing in the economy.