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.