COWS in the News

“It isn’t a time of retreat from work, it is a time of engagement and workers taking this moment to recognize the power they have,” said labor economist Laura Dresser, associate director of COWS and …

“If I was going to pick a single year to think of the best possible picture for workers in this century, I would pick this year,” said Laura Dresser, a professor in the UW-Madison Sandra …

A new report from a UW-Madison think tank shows wage growth in the past two years has helped to close some of the state’s “pronounced racial and ethnic disparities.”

The authoritative measure of Wisconsin’s economic circumstance suggests that we actually have something to celebrate this Labor Day. Indeed, according to the State of Working Wisconsin report from the UW-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS), …

“So, to stay in that market to catch up with or to keep workers working in childcare, there’s a lot of wage pressure,” Dresser said. “And that wage pressure really changes costs, because labor is …

Dresser said there are ways tech companies can be more deliberate about diversifying their talent pools, including leadership positions. They can provide child care supports, she said, and structure roles around the individual candidate’s strengths …

Given that public financing for private sports franchises has become increasingly common, and the proposed Iron District will need it to move forward, a think-tank affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called COWS (the Center on …

“These public programs have really choked the wages in a lot of ways,” said Laura Dresser, a labor economist and associate director of UW-Madison think tank COWS who has spent decades studying low-wage work. “It’s …

“The economy has a lot of jobs and this gives workers more leverage than they’ve had in a while. There’s some evidence that the strongest wage increases are happening in our lowest wage sectors,” Laura …

“The intensity of that collapse is truly historic,” labor economist Laura Dresser said.