All Publications

Developed by COWS for Regional Industry Skills Education (RISE), Wisconsin RISE Target Population breaks down demographically those individuals who could use higher skills and better wages.

Numerous barriers restrict the market for energy efficiency financing. The recommendations in this report suggest ways to reduce or eliminate these barriers in order to improve the function of the market.

The State of Working Wisconsin – Update 2011 provides data on the unemployed and underemployed in the state.

This paper explores the extent to which this emerging green economy can offer a pathway out of poverty for low-income young people, many of whom have disengaged from school and are struggling to find a way into the economic mainstream. These disconnected youth — some six million strong — represent an untapped resource. Despite the fact that they have experienced difficulties in their personal lives or communities and may not have completed high school, many seek a second chance, returning to programs such as Service and Conservation Corps or other education and work initiatives in their local communities. The Corps Network and several partners — including COWS, Green For All, The Academy for Educational Development (AED), Workforce Strategy Center and Living Cities — guided the development of the paper with additional support from numerous stakeholders.

This report summarizes some of the major changes included in the 2011-2013 Wisconsin budget affecting jobs, job quality, and economic development, along with a few other Governor Scott Walker initiatives.

Co-published along with Demos, the report shows that Wisconsinites are facing a lack of good jobs, declining access to benefits, higher costs to raise children and decreasing access to post-secondary credentials, among other challenges. According to the briefing paper, these trends — combined with 2011-13 cuts to education, public worker pensions, and corporate taxes — are squeezing Wisconsin’s workers out of the middle class and moving economic opportunity and security further out of reach.

Governor Scott Walker promised in his campaign to “create” 250,000 jobs during his first term, and his press office and the media regularly measure progress towards this goal. However, this report shows that Governor Scott Walker should not get credit (or blame) for overall jobs numbers in Wisconsin. These numbers are almost entirely driven by the national economy.

Smart Transportation is the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s (PennDOT) integrated response to the crisis of crumbling infrastructure and limited revenues to address it, and the need to better align transportation with community revitalization and sound land use policy. PennDOT was the first state program reviewed in detail by COWS’ State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI), and it remains one of our prime examples of a thoughtful DOT wrestling with the challenges of fiscal austerity, sustainability, and system preservation.

The review was done at the request of PennDOT to assess the effectiveness of its Smart Transportation program in integrating land use and transportation in its decision-making and to identify areas of opportunity to advance the Smart Transportation agenda.

The Wisconsin Values Budget is a balanced approach to our fiscal challenges that demonstrates Governor Scott Walker’s choices are not necessary choices. Through sacrifice that is fairly shared, and by building on Wisconsin’s history of progressive innovation, we can maintain and further improve public structures that work for everyone. The Wisconsin Values Budget, unlike the governor’s “cuts only” approach, begins again to truly share the burden of creating a dynamic and prosperous economy that promotes opportunity, security, and freedom for all Wisconsinites.

Lead Sponsors: Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, COWS.

Documents include long version (4 page) or short version (1 page) describing this alternative budget plan.

COWS offers data on public-sector workers — their pay relative to the private-sector workforce, the size of Wisconsin’s public workforce over time, and analysis of what the wage reductions in the 2011-13 budget will cost different public workers — and data on the most most important cause of the state’s budget deficit: declining revenue due to the Great Recession.