State of Working Wisconsin
For more than two decades, the State of Working Wisconsin has presented the workers’ perspective on the Wisconsin economy. The State of Working Wisconsin 2022 provides the most recent data available on wages, jobs, disparities, and unions to build a stronger understanding of what is going on in the state’s labor market.
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Worker Power Levels the Playing Field
Strong community benefit agreements are the most certain and robust way for communities to obtain real and lasting returns from large-scale private developments such as the proposed Iron District in Milwaukee.
Playing with Public Money in Milwaukee
Asking for public money for sports stadiums, developers promise economic development, urban renewal, and neighborhood revitalization. Despite the big promises, public investments are often neither transparent nor accountable.
The Crisis in Milwaukee’s Service Industry
There’s a crisis in service work in Milwaukee. Too many of these jobs offer low wages, inadequate and unpredictable hours, and weak or non-existent benefits packages.
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COWS in the News
The Conservative Astroturf Organization Rolling Back Child Labor Protections
Laura Dresser, a labor economist and associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a progressive policy organization, told Workday Magazine and the Prospect that the push to erode child labor protections is “less about …
October 11, 2022WisBusiness: the Podcast with Laura Dresser of COWS
Dresser shares her perspective on demographic trends affecting the workforce, as more workers age out than the number joining the labor market. This issue is particularly significant in rural parts of Wisconsin, the report notes. …
September 16, 2022New Report Shows Improved Employee Power in Wisconsin
A recent workforce study from a UW policy institute says that conditions have broadly improved for Wisconsin workers. We speak with the associate director of the UW-Madison think tank COWS about how national labor trends …
September 13, 2022- More