High Road Strategy Center in the News

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.

The State of Working Wisconsin 2024 report, released ahead of Labor Day, notes this change marks a “reversal of trends” from the past 40 years or so. The income gap between lower- and higher-wage workers has been closing in the recovery period following the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns and continues through this year, the report shows.

On the other side of the Great Lakes, the annual State of Working Wisconsin report presented by the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison articulates both successes and shortcomings for workers. While there’s promising news about increased job numbers and rising wages, especially for low-wage workers, the report points out persistent challenges, such as inadequate access to childcare and initiation of union rights, as still major hurdles for many workers.

Wisconsin’s workers saw record-matching wage growth last year and sustained low unemployment through 2024, according to an annual labor report from a think tank at UW-Madison, though many inequalities within the labor market remain.

The Working Wisconsin report examines the economy from the vantage point of how it affects workers. It is issued annually by the center, a nonprofit that researches and promotes solutions to social problems that focus on “shared growth and opportunity, environmental sustainability, and resilient democratic institutions as necessary and achievable complements in human development.”

UW-Madison labor economist and High Road Strategy Center associate director Laura Dresser discusses the group’s State of Working Wisconsin 2024 report on job numbers, wage growth and gender pay gaps.

As inflation calmed last year, Wisconsin workers’ buying power grew at a record rate, according to a new report from the High Road Strategy Center, a University of Wisconsin-Madison think tank. The center’s annual “State of Working Wisconsin” report shows what’s changed for workers of different races and genders in the last year.

It’s having a deep impact on the labor force. According to a 2023 report from High Roads Strategy Center, part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin’s women labor force participation dropped below 60% for the first time since the late 1980s.

“Our relative (workforce) advantage shrank quite substantially over the last two years,” said Laura Dresser, associate director of High Roads Strategy Center. “We know that child care has been in crisis, even before the pandemic. Our structures for taking care of kids tend to weigh heavily on women and on women’s work.”

We welcome Laura Dresser, Associate Director, of the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Peter Rickman, president, Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Union to discuss the finding and key policy and organizing implications of a new High Road Center report, “From Community Benefits, to Collective Bargaining, and Back.”