Advertisement "Since the mid-1970s, economic growth has become a spectator sport, generating gains for the few, and already rich, and leaving everyone else behind," says a new report by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at UW-Madison.
But there are some types of businesses whose prospects remain strong, even in the face of high fuel prices, rising raw-material costs and worldwide competition.
"Information technology is a sector that's growing by leaps and bounds," said Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. "There's significant demand for everything from computer programmers to software designers and network engineers."
Projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show nearly 150,000 technology jobs will have been created nationwide between 2002 and 2012, about twice the expected 70,000 people who will earn college degrees in the field during that time.
Even small, local tech companies already are feeling the crunch. "We have difficulty finding the right kinds of people, difficulty filling our open positions," said Adam Simcock, president of Earth Information Technologies (EarthIT), 2453 Atwood Ave.
Founded in 1999, his company has 11 employees, two of whom were added in the past year, and revenues projected at $1.2 million, up 10 percent over last year. EarthIT creates software used to help clients sort through data, for example, to chart revenue over time or compare performance to others in their industry, over the Internet.
Another growing employment field in the state involves environmentally oriented businesses. "I think there's a real surge of that in Wisconsin," Still said. Among the entries in this year's Governor's Business Plan Contest, 20 percent of the finalists were clean-tech companies, he said.
Companies such as WindConnect, a Madison wind development consulting subsidiary of Alliant Energy, reported $98 million in revenue just in the April-June quarter, up 75 percent from a year ago, contributing a substantial portion of the Madison utility holding company's 25 percent jump in profits for the quarter.
But for those in other fields, the outlook is gloomier, said Laura Dresser, labor economist and COWS associate director. "What you have is clearly a down direction in jobs over the last 12 months," she said.
Across Wisconsin, businesses of nearly all types have closed factories and reduced staff this year.
General Motors slashed employment at its Janesville plant by more than 1,000 since June and plans to halt production entirely, sometime in 2009.
In June, Domtar closed its Port Edwards paper mill, affecting 500 jobs.
NewPage is closing its Kimberly paper mill, eliminating 475 jobs.
Even Harley-Davidson, celebrating its 105th anniversary this summer, is cutting more than 700 positions, about half of them in Milwaukee.
In the Madison area, job losses include
Most area construction industry unions say they have people on layoff, said Jim Cavanaugh, president of the South Central Federation of Labor. "There was a period of time in this decade when people were coming from other parts of the country to work here because so much construction was going on," he said.
Several troubling long-term employment trends have collided with more current economic woes, said Dresser. Wisconsin's median wage was $15.17 an hour in 2007, just 57 cents more than the median wage of 1979, adjusted for inflation.
There are growing wage gaps between those with college degrees and those without, and between white and African-American employees, and shrinking pension and health-care benefits. "Wisconsin health-care coverage rates are in precipitous decline," the COWS study says.
In 2006, 58 percent of workers obtained health insurance from their employers, down from 73 percent in 1979. Of low-income workers, only one-fourth receive health coverage and fewer than 20 percent are in a pension program, according to the study.
At the same time, the subprime housing crisis and high prices for food and fuel are squeezing budgets.
"I don't see an economic signal that we're going to get a big turnaround quickly," Dresser said.
For organized labor, the outlook has been "tough" for the last 30 years, Cavanaugh said. And "whenever the economy has a downward trend, things get tougher," he added.
Unions represent 14.3 percent of all Wisconsin workers, down from 24 percent in the early 1980s, the COWS study says. Of the lowest wage earners, only 3.5 percent were unionized.
In the past year, efforts to decertify the grocery workers union at Woodman's have been discouraging, Cavanaugh said. On the positive side, though, "we haven't had any strikes or really difficult contract renewals," he said.
Cavanaugh said he is pinning his hopes on passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation before Congress that would make it easier for employees to organize. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a co-sponsor; the bill was approved by the House of Representatives but died in a Senate filibuster.
If Obama is elected in November along with enough Democrats in the House and Senate to pass the measure, the legislation is likely to pass, Cavanaugh said.
"So there is some hope that there will be changes so that unions can grow again," he said.
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