UW think tank: Wisconsin job growth lags behind national rate

Wisconsin would have about 90,000 more jobs had the state kept up with the national job market growth rate, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy said in a new report.

In its State of Working Wisconsin 2015 report, the group said Wisconsin added 140,700 jobs from January 2011 until June 2015, giving it a 5.1 percent job growth rate. But adding jobs at the national rate of 8.4 percent would have meant an additional 90,127 jobs in Wisconsin.

The state’s unemployment rate, meanwhile, is back to where it was before the recession and is below the national rate, although the group cautioned that the rate doesn’t count people who have given up looking for jobs.

But while 4.3 percent of the state’s whites were unemployed in 2014, Hispanics saw an unemployment rate of 9.1 and African Americans’ unemployment rates were at 19.9 percent — the highest in the nation.

The group also found an increase in the state’s median wage to $17.38 per hour in 2014, just above the median wage before the recession. But the long-term picture shows a “very slow wage growth,” with the Wisconsin median worker’s wage just $0.71 higher than in 1979 if you account for inflation.

And the “gender gap” in pay still exists but has decreased over the past 35 years, the report said, with women making $0.81 for every dollar men made in 2014. In 1979, that figure was $0.59.

Read the full report