Category: In the News

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. “I think everybody sees that the labor markets are tight, and this is something that demographers have been watching in …

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 are playing out in Wisconsin.

Dresser, whose organization recently published the 2022 edition of its “State of Working Wisconsin” report, pointed to the spike in union activity as “the forefront” of a wider surge in labor organizing that also includes non-unionized workers pushing informally to improve their workplaces.

“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 co-author of the report, as she set the stage for the discussion.

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.”

“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 Rosenbaum School of Social Work and a co-author of the report.

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), “2022 provides better news about work and for workers than any year in this century.”

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 and background. And organizations can help women build their network.

“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 a matter of public policy that home health workers are paid so little. We haven’t created good public jobs out …

“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 Dresser said in an email. But, she said “there’s not great evidence” that those changes are causing “lasting gains” for …