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DocumentRogers, J. “The Friedricks Threat”. The Nation, 2016.
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,. Wisconsin Job Watch - September 2015 Data Update. COWS, 2015.
The upward trend in Wisconsin continued in September. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Wisconsin added 1,400 jobs that month. The pace of job growth in September was much slower than that established in the previous two months when Wisconsin added14,000 (in July) and 7,000 jobs (in August). Still it is good to see consistently positive numbers, even if a slow pace. In Wisconsin, eight years after the beginning of the Great Recession, the number of jobs is, at last, defintely and consistently above the pre-recession level.
However, since the population of the state has grown steadily since the end of the recession, our labor market still has not fully recovered. If we aspire to the same level of opportunity that Wisconsin had before the recession we need to create jobs on pace with population growth. As our job market has not kept pace, Wisconsin still shows a deficit of 102,000 jobs.
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Dresser, L. Valuing Care by Valuing Care Workers. COWS, 2015.Document
Care workers—including providers of both child care and hands-on direct care supporting the elderly and people with disabilities—number 5.5 million and are employed in some of the fastest growing and lowest paying jobs in the American economy. Their “priceless” work, of such critical importance to families and society, rarely offers more than miserable wages and shoddy benefits. Improving these jobs and securing a decent standard of care requires fundamentally and dramatically reshaping the nation’s understanding of what care work is, what it is worth, and how to pay for it.
This paper is released as part of the Roosevelt Institute’s larger report, Blueprint to Empower Workers to Shared Prosperity.
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DocumentRogers, J. To Support Wisconsin’s Middle Class, Change Our State Government. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2015, pp. 1-2J.
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,. Wisconsin Job Watch - August 2015 Data Update. COWS, 2015.
Wisconsin’s unsteady labor market finally added jobs in July which offers good news in the face of the decline in jobs since March. In June, Wisconsin had the same number of jobs that it had at the beginning of the 2015 which was also and finally the same as number the state had before the recession began (December 2007). Over the last two months of summer, July and August 2015, some 20,000 jobs were added in the state. Wisconsin is now solidly above pre-recession levels, and also hopefully on a consistently positive job growth path as well. It is good news that Wisconsin’s labor market is finally larger than it was nearly 8 years ago. Still, the potential labor force in the state is much larger than it was in the past, and the jobs we have today are not sufficient to keep up with our population growth. As Figure and Table 1 make clear, Wisconsin still faces a significant jobs deficit and needs stronger growth to fill that gap. In order to simply provide the same opportunity that we had in 2007, Wisconsin’s “jobs deficit” now stands at around 102,000 jobs.
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Dresser, L., and C. Reynolds. Putting Families First in Wisconsin: Analyzing Paid Leave Insurance Program. COWS, 2015.
This report analyzes paid family leave insurance could look like in Wisconsin. Paid leave insurance allows workers to take short-term paid leave in order to care for their families without fear of losing their jobs or significant loss of income. This is a policy that helps workers balance both work and family, and programs are already well established in California and New Jersey. Building off the experience in those two states, we estimate utilization and financing for a Paid Leave Insurance program for the state. Such a program would likely grow to support some 100,000 working Wisconsinites each year and could be supported by a premium on wages of 0.4 percent.
DocumentPaid leave is especially critical for the nearly three-in-ten working families in the state who have low income (below twice the poverty line) in spite of their strong commitment to work. For these families, sick and vacation leave is stingy or nonexistent, reliable day care for children or adults is prohibitively expensive, and workers themselves are more likely to have health challenges. -
Dresser, L., S. Fu, J. Rodriguez, and J. Rogers. The State of Working Wisconsin 2015: Facts & Figures. COWS, 2015.
Over Labor Day weekend, COWS released The State of Working Wisconsin 2015 Facts & Figures, an overview of the critical issues facing working people in the state. From the perspective of working Wisconsin, the news this weekend is not good. Wisconsin faces slow growth, extreme racial disparity in unemployment, long-term stagnation in wages, and one-fourth of workers struggling in poverty-wage jobs.
Since 1996, COWS has released The State of Working Wisconsin every two years on Labor Day. It provides use the best and most recent data available to help build a comprehensive understanding of how working people in the state are doing. The full report comes out in even years. In odd years, like this one, 2015, the report is abbreviated and more focused.
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,. Wisconsin Job Watch - June 2015 Data Update. COWS, 2015.
After a very dramatic loss in the number of jobs in the month of May, June brings slightly better news for the state of Wisconsin. In June, the state added 1,900 new jobs. On net, however, the Wisconsin job market of 2015 has been largely stagnant. Last month, in the middle of the year, Wisconsin posted 2,882,000 jobs, a number only slightly higher than the state’s January count. And, in fact, the number is just barely higher than the number of jobs Wisconsin had when the recession began over seven years ago. And because the population of the state has grown over those years, Wisconsin remains substantially short of the number of jobs needed to keep opportunity in line with 2007 levels. The Wisconsin “jobs deficit” still stands at 115,700. At the current rate of growth, it would take Wisconsin another 5 years to fill our jobs hole.
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Rhodes-Conway, S., P. Bailon, S. Munger, and C. Reynolds. A District That Works: Policies to Promote Equity and Job Quality in Our Nation’s Capital. COWS, 2015.
The District of Columbia is going through a period of great transformation. While it has successfully strengthened its fiscal health and its economy and population have grown, its prosperity has not been evenly distributed. However, it is not too late for the District to adopt measures that strengthen low income communities and communities of color and push back against the trend of growing inequality. The new administration has a fresh opportunity to tackle these challenges. It will be essential that key leaders in the administration are driven by a strong vision for how to make the District work for all of its residents.
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Dresser, L., and J. Knauss. The US Child Care Industry. COWS, 2015.
The purpose of this report is to provide an accessible overview of child care with a special focus on the child care workforce in the United States in 2014. The broad questions that guide this document are:
- What does the industry “look like”? What does this mean for workers in child care?
- How has it changed and not changed over recent decades? And how have the skills and pay of workers changed, or not?
- What are the strongest ways to enhance workers’ skills and wages building around an agenda of quality care and quality jobs for the future in child care?