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The UniverCity Alliance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is looking for a new local government partner for the UniverCity Year program for the period of 2018-2021. Could this be your community?
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Katya Spear. “Improving Health Outcomes for All Through Local Policy Making”. The Municipality – Your Voice. Your Wisconsin, League of Wisconsin Municipalities, 2018.
First featured in the March 2018 Community Health issue of The Municipality – Your Voice. Your Wisconsin. Published by the League of Wisconsin Municipalities.
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Wisconsin Job Watch: 4th Quarter 2017 Update. COWS, 2018.
In the fourth quarter of 2017, Wisconsin added 12,500 jobs, most of them in October. In contrast to the strong October, in December, Wisconsin actually lost jobs. Still, over the quarter, the state’s job base grew. Growth was driven by private sector gains, with the state adding 15,200 private jobs. The state lost 2,700 public sector jobs across the quarter capping off a very weak year in the public sector. Wisconsin’s ended 2017 with 3,300 fewer public sector jobs than a year ago. Still, as with the quarter, so with the year. Private sector growth meant that the state jobs base grew 1.4 percent: Wisconsin added 40,200 jobs in 2017. The unemployment rate continues to drop slowly across the nation and Wisconsin is not an exception. Unemployment in Wisconsin stands now at 3.0%, significantly below the level of the end of 2016 and at its lowest point since the recession.
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Mel Meder, Satya Rhodes-Conway, and Michael Wolf. A New Jersey That Works for Working People. COWS, 2018.Document
New Jersey’s economy has not recovered from the recession like it could – and should – have. Economic difficulties that began with losses in manufacturing jobs throughout the 1980s have persisted. Despite a diverse population and a shift in land use from sprawling suburban growth to more infill development, job numbers and GDP are growing too slowly. And what growth there is, isn’t distributed equally. New Jersey struggles with extreme racial and economic disparities that distribute the benefits of the economy not as shared prosperity, but to the wealthy.
State policy can and must lift up working people and their families, creating a more equitable and inclusive New Jersey. The State must act to raise labor market standards, creating more jobs that pay good wages and provide full benefits. State economic development strategy should also adopt higher standards, ensuring that only businesses that provide good jobs are incentivized with public funds. Housing and transportation policy at the state level should direct resources and planning toward more connected, dense neighborhoods that are either near job centers or within easy, affordable transit access to job opportunities; key to this will be ensuring that affordable housing is available, especially in areas with increasing development. Additionally, policy shifts can uphold the civil rights of people of color and immigrants, while also protecting these communities from disproportionate health and economic impacts of environmental degradation. This report discusses a selection of such policies.
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Chris McCahill, and Eric Sundquist. Connecting Sacramento. 2017.Connecting Sacramento combines location-based trip-making data from multiple sources with modern accessibility analysis to assess how they can guide transportation- and land use-related decisions around transit stations in Sacramento. Accessibility analysis lets us measure transportation performance in terms of people’s ability to reach destinations instead of simply how fast cars move or whether transit runs on time. Trip-making data, which come from smartphones, navigation devices, and GPS-enabled vehicles, let us understand people’s travel patterns and trip characteristics in detail without relying on costly travel surveys or complex travel demand models.
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Logan Dredske, and Chris McCahill. Accessibility in Practice. SSTI, Virginia Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, 2017.Planning agencies and transportation decision makers often talk about the importance of improving access to destinations, but they rarely have the tools or resources to measure accessibility and incorporate those metrics into decision making. This report guides agencies through that process. The guide outlines general concepts, data needs and availability, analysis tools, and other considerations in measuring accessibility. It describes different ways accessibility can be measured and demonstrates how the metrics can be used in several specific project evaluation examples. It also briefly describes the potential use of accessibility metrics in predicting outcomes such as travel demand and transit ridership.
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Criminalizing hard working families and falling into irrational fear harms all Wisconsin families and the Wisconsin economy. Immigrants are a core part of the Wisconsin economy and contributing to this state through taxes, education, and self-owned businesses. The state should be pursuing ways to welcome and build the skills of this community.
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Laura Dresser. “Human Capital in Context: Policies That Shape Urban Labor Markets”. Jobs and the Labor Force of Tomorrow: Migration, Training, Education, University of Illinois Press, 2017, pp. 25-44.
Chapter in Michael A. Pagano‘s Jobs and the Labor Force of Tomorrow: Migration, Training, Education.
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Wisconsin Job Watch - First Quarter 2017. COWS, 2017.
After an inconsistent 2016, Wisconsin started off 2017 with a modest job growth across the first quarter. January through March, the state added 12,800 jobs. The growth was concentrated in January and February and offset job losses of 3700 jobs in March. Over the quarter, private sector creation compensated for the loss of almost 7000 jobs in the public sector. Additionally, the unemployment rate continues to edge down nationally and in Wisconsin. Unemployment in Wisconsin stands now at 3.4%, significantly below the level of the end of 2016.
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Laura Dresser, and Joel Rogers. The State of Working Wisconsin 2017: Facts & Figures. COWS, 2017.
For more than two decades now, annually, on Labor Day, COWS reports on how working people are faring in the state. The State of Working Wisconsin, released biannually on even-numbered years since 1996, is our long-form report, and looks at the economy comprehensively from a working-family perspective. In odd-numbered years, also biannually, we provide a more abbreviated and focused report.
DocumentIn this year’s report, we provide our overview of some of the most critical issues facing working people in the state. The issues, taken together, are daunting – slow growth in the Wisconsin labor market, long-term stagnation in wages, extreme black/white disparity, increasing income inequality, and declining unionization. The report provides a chance to take stock of what the data say about working people in Wisconsin.
High Road Strategy Center