High Road Strategy Center Releases State of Working Wisconsin 2025
For Labor Day, the High Road Strategy Center has released the State of Working Wisconsin 2025. Our 2025 report lands at an extraordinary time for working Wisconsin. Economic growth, which began as the recovery from pandemic shutdowns, continues, and key economic indicators are solid. The state’s median wage grew to a record high of $25.01 and our labor market grew to a record 3,058,500 jobs. These are strengths to be celebrated.
However, in 2025 job growth has been slow both in the state and nationally, suggesting that the economy is cooling. Further, Wisconsin’s economy is riddled with inequalities by geography, race, education and gender. Workers, especially those in lower wage jobs, struggle to make ends meet. Unions, which raise wages and help fight inequality, are in decline in the state.
Massive disruption in federal policy defines this moment for working Wisconsin as much as the data. Changes include the economic chaos of a volatile tariff regime, aggressive hostility toward immigrant workers, the nation’s largest instance of union-busting, the announcement of a dizzying array of anti-worker policies, and dramatic cuts to programs that support lower wage workers in the new budget. Even the federal data on which this report relies has come under attack.
“The data we have this Labor Day show some real strengths for working Wisconsin owing to the strong recovery from pandemic shutdowns. But long-standing inequalities are still with us, and federal policy puts substantial clouds on the horizon,” stated High Road Strategy Center Associate Director and report author Laura Dresser. “I’m especially concerned about the administration’s attacks on the integrity of federal economic data.”
Key findings:
Wisconsin’s 2024 median wage – $25.01 per hour – reached a record high.
For the second year in a row, real wages (which take inflation into account) rose relatively quickly (up $1.40 per hour in the last two years).
Wisconsin’s jobs are growing half as fast as the national rate and 2025 growth has been weak.
Wisconsin has 2% more jobs than before the pandemic; the nation has added 5% to its job base over the same time. Wisconsin added just 1400 jobs each month in 2025.
Federal policies – pro-tariff, anti-immigrant, and anti-worker – are reshaping the economy, and Wisconsin workers will pay the price.
Tariffs increase prices, hostility toward immigrants hobbles labor market growth, and federal cuts to health care and other supports will hit Wisconsin’s low-wage workers particularly hard.
Wisconsin’s workers are losing the protection of unions at a rate that outstrips national and neighboring states.
In Wisconsin, union coverage collapsed from 14% to 7% from 2011-24. Over the same period, national unionization fell from 13% to 11%.
Immigrant workers make massive contributions to the Wisconsin economy.
Wisconsin’s 320,000 immigrants make up 7% of the state’s workforce, generate $23 billion in economic output, and contribute in every sector of our economy.
“The administration is forging a disturbing path,” said High Road Strategy Center Director Joel Rogers. “Busting unions, breaking our health care system, and delivering tax breaks to billionaires are a higher priority than actually running a government that works for working people.”
To view State of Working Wisconsin 2025, click here.
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ABOUT HIGH ROAD STRATEGY CENTER
Based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, High Road Strategy Center is a national think-and-do tank that promotes “high road” solutions to social problems. These treat shared growth and opportunity, environmental sustainability, and resilient democratic institutions as necessary and achievable complements of human development. Our work is nonpartisan but values-based. We seek a world of equal opportunity and security for all.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
