There was less to celebrate on Labor Day 2008 for the working people of the state. The cost of the usual Labor Day barbeque – the food (and gas to get it) – is going up, while wages are not. And that’s for the folks who have a job.
Wisconsin has lost 24,000 jobs since last summer. Manufacturing jobs – some of the highest paying – have taken the biggest hit. We’re in the first sustained period of decline in our median wage since the early 1980s.
These data come from the newly-released State of Working Wisconsin 2008 (find it at www.cows.org) compiled and published biennially by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a policy institute housed on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The collective impression that the data leave is negative. And, bad as the news is now, it will probably get worse in the coming months. We are likely slipping into a new recession before we fully recovered from the last one.