The U.S. economic recovery has been slow. Although Minnesota hasn’t been immune to the effects of an economic recovery characterized by fits and starts, Minnesota’s economy has a number of strengths, compared to the recent past and to national trends. Some economic indicators are back to pre-recession levels, including unemployment. Considering perhaps our most comparable neighbor, Wisconsin, our relative economic strength shines through with Minnesota’s higher labor force participation and higher median wages.
However, the national economy is not seeing the growth in wages and family incomes that we might expect seven years into the economic recovery. As a result, many working Minnesotans are still struggling to reach economic security. The inflation-adjusted wages of many Minnesotans have just gotten back to where they were before the Great Recession hit, but the longer-term trend is that wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living. As a result, many families can’t meet their basic needs for child care, transportation, housing and health care.
A review of recent economic information reveals that too many working Minnesotans still lack the quality jobs that would allow them to support themselves and their families.
- September 2, 2016
- COWS
- Laura Dresser, Joel Rogers, and Javier Rodriguez S.
In The State of Working Wisconsin 2016, COWS finds that the long shadow of the Great Recession is finally lifting in Wisconsin. The state has more jobs than ever before, unemployment rates have fallen to pre-recession levels, and workers that want full-time work are having an easier time finding it. Labor market opportunities are more clear and consistent than they have been in nearly a decade.
Longer-term challenges that Wisconsin faces, long documented by COWS, remain daunting. Wages have been stagnant over the last three and a half decades and workers have very little to show for increasing productivity. Women earn less than men and the gap is slow to close. African Americans have suffered declining wages and growing disparity. The wage reward for higher education is evident, as is the difficulty of making ends meet without completing some post-secondary education. One-in-four workers toils in a poverty wage job and low-wage sectors are growing faster than better-paying ones. Racial disparities, while hardly unique to Wisconsin, are particularly extreme here. A variety of economic and social indicators of racial inequality consistently identify us as among the most racially unequal states in the nation.
Hard work is supposed to provide the income to allow people to get by and set their children up for future success. North Carolina policymakers have violated that promise, both with their policy choices that make it more difficult for North Carolinians to connect to good jobs and with their failure to enact the policies that make sure work translates into greater economic security.
The national economic recovery began in 2009, but it has yet to reach North Carolinians across the state. Too many workers have failed to find work or left the labor market for lack of jobs in their community. Far too many who are working find their wages falling short of what it takes to make ends meet and otherwise contribute to their communities’ improvement.
This is a divisive time in America. One contributing factor is nearly 40 years of economic stagnation, with some workers, families and communities going backwards economically. Particularly when political leaders fail to offer those hurt by a restructuring economy a realistic promise of better days, anger and despair can spread and undermine the fabric of our society. Some may even be lead to resent “other” groups—to think that their lack of progress results from the undue gains made by another group.
The State of Working Pennsylvania 2016 documents the reality of difficult economic times for many groups. It tells a fairly simple story: most Pennsylvania workers have shared little of the economic gains of the last four decades because a tiny slice at the top has garnered so much of those gains. Whatever group people see themselves belonging to, in many cases that group has not done well. But our numbers also validate that most of those “other” groups have not done well either. The data show that if you think some “other” group is unfairly receiving some of the economic well-being that is rightfully yours, you are mostly wrong—unless that “other” group is the highest-income 1 percent.