Wages Matter
For Wisconsin’s 3 million workers, wages are the most important measure of job quality.
In this chapter, we provide analysis of wages and wage trends to offer insight on job quality and economic inequality in the state. Trends in wages over time show how workers are doing and whether wages are keeping up with the cost of living. The 2024 median wage analyses provide some very good news – the state’s median wage reached $25.01, just above the last high in inflation-adjusted wages set in 2021. Still, there are substantial disparities in wages based on race, gender, ethnicity, and education. We offer analysis of wage inequality in the state and how it is changing.
This section draws on the most recent data available from the U.S. Current Population Survey, providing median hourly wages through 2024. Throughout the chapter, we take inflation into account by reporting all values in 2024 dollars. This inflation adjustment provides a view of wages in terms of consistent purchasing power. Our data covers all workers in the state, those who are paid hourly wages and those who earn salaries. For salary earners, hourly wages are calculated by dividing earnings by hours of work. Throughout, we offer analysis of median hourly wages (the wage for the worker at the middle of the wage distribution) to provide the perspective from the center of Wisconsin’s labor market.
To start the chapter, we ground our discussion in a very long-term view of wage dynamics. Since the 1970s, economic growth and worker well-being have diverged. Though productivity is growing rapidly, workers’ wages have grown much more slowly. This long-term picture provides a foundation for considering the current wage, long-term trends in wages, for all workers and for key demographic groups. We close by focusing on wages trends from 2019-2024.
The Divergence between Economic Growth and Wages.
W1 shows that despite substantial productivity and education advances over the last four decades, median wages have only slightly increased for workers.
In the State of Working Wisconsin, we have long documented concerning long-term trends in workers’ wages and growing inequality. The underlying problem is shown in W1: despite substantial productivity and education advances over the last four decades, compensation growth has been slow. Workers do not experience enough of the rewards of economic growth.
This last four decades contrasts starkly with the period from the end of World War II to the 1970s. During that time, median wages were closely linked to economic growth. As the economy grew and productivity increased, workers’ wages grew at roughly the same rate. This was an era of “shared prosperity” when progress paid off for working people.
By the late 1970s, productivity and wage growth diverged. Since 1979, productivity is up nearly 86% while workers hourly pay has increased by just 32%. Despite strong wage growth over nearly half a century, economic growth has not translated into widely shared prosperity and working people have been left behind.
Median Wages in Wisconsin Reaches New High of $25 per hour.
W2 displays median hourly wages for Wisconsin and the United States from 1979 to 2024. Wages have reached a new high. (By adjusting for inflation and expressing all values in 2024 dollars, we can compare the actual purchasing power of wages over time.)
In 2024, Wisconsin’s median wage – $25.01 per hour – reached a new high above the previous high set in 2021. Workers in the state have experienced two years of solid wage growth that have more than made up for the damage to wages inflicted by the very high inflation of 2022. The 2024 Wisconsin median wage is just slightly above the national median (which is unusual but not unprecedented (see W2)).
The long-term view provided by W2 shows how remarkable the last decade of wage growth has been. Wisconsin workers actually lost ground in the 1980s with wages falling to well below the national median. Wisconsin began to make up the wage loss and finally got ahead of the 1979 median wage toward the end of the growth of the 1990s.
In the early 2000s, wages were stagnant and the Great Recession brought wages to the 21st century’s low point in 2012. Wages grew slowly from 2012 until 2018 during the sluggish recovery from the Great Recession.
Since 2018, however, wage growth has been strong. While high inflation in 2022 brought wages down, wages grew in both 2023 and 2024 and, as a result, the median wage has reached a record high.
2024 Wage Disparity in Working Wisconsin
The median wage for all workers fails to capture the whole story of working people’s wages in Wisconsin. Women workers, Black workers, and Hispanic workers all face considerable wage disadvantages.
There is a stark gender gap between men’s and women’s wages. In 2024, men’s median wage – $27.05 – exceeded women’s median of $22.98 by more than $4 per hour. Men’s wages are 15% higher than women’s wages.
W4 illustrates the stark difference in wages based on race, ethnicity, and gender in Wisconsin and the U.S.
With a median wage of $28.54 per hour, white men have the highest wages. White women earned about 17% less than white men at $23.66 per hour. Black men and women earned roughly the same hourly median wage of $19.93 and $20.29 respectively, about 29% less than white men. Hispanic men earned $18.56 while Hispanic women earned $17.57. These wages are 35% and 38% lower than white men’s median.
Wisconsin’s Women Make Strong Gains Over 45 Years, Racial Wage Inequality Grows
W5 and W6 demonstrate that since 1979, women’s wages have grown rapidly while men’s wages have only edged up.
Over the last 45 years, there has been a remarkable closing in the gender wage gap. As shown in W5, from 1979-2024, women’s wages grew by more than 50%. Over the same period, men’s wages grew only very slightly. The gender gap in wages is closing as women make gains.
W6 makes it clear that within race and ethnicity groups, it is white women growing wages that are driving the positive picture for women. W6 shows that white women have experienced 56% wage growth. Hispanic women have had substantial gains as well, with wages up 41%. Black women’s wages have grown, but much more slowly, with median wages growing by just 19%.
The race and ethnicity differences for men are stark as well. Men’s wage trends over 1979-2024 are much less impressive. For white men, wages grew slightly over the period. But median wages for Black and Hispanic have actually fallen substantially. While the median for white men grew by 9% over 1979-2024, Black men’s median wage declined 12% and Hispanic men’s wage fell 11%.
Inequality in the Wage Distribution
W9 provides a view of inequality displaying the disparity between lower wage and higher wage workers in Wisconsin and the U.S.
The median wage provides information from the middle of the wage distribution, but offers no insight into the distance between higher and lower wage earners. In Wisconsin, the 20th percentile worker (who earns more than 20% of the workforce, and less than 80%) earns $16.98 per hour. Near the top of the wage distribution, the 80th percentile worker earns $40.81, more than twice as much per hour as the 20th percentile worker.
Both the 20th percentile wage and the 80th percentile wages have reached their highest levels.
Raising the Minimum Wage in Wisconsin Would Help Close the Racial and Gender Pay Gap
Since 2009, Wisconsin’s minimum wage has been stuck at the federal level: $7.25 an hour. Raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour would not only be politically popular but would directly or indirectly raise the wages of 231,800 (or 18%) of women workers, 36,200 (or 25.6%) Black workers, and 50,200 (or 26.6%) Hispanic workers in the state. Read more about the potential benefits of a higher minimum wage in our report Can’t Survive on 7.25.
Education and Wages
W10 demonstrates the continued importance of college completion for workers’ wages in Wisconsin.
Workers who have associate’s or bachelor’s degrees earned wages above the state median. Working Wisconsinites with bachelor’s degrees or more education earned $35.03 per hour, while those with associate’s degrees earned $26.37. Completing a two- or four-year college degree is associated with stronger wages, but just attending college without completing the degree has almost no effect. The wages of Wisconsinites with some college but no degree, $20.26, are actually just slightly lower than wages of workers who ended their education with a high school degree (median wage $21.42). Workers without a high school diploma earned a median wage of $15 per hour.
2019-2024 Wages: Wages Have Grown After Pandemic Shutdowns
W11 shows the changes in median wages in the U.S. and Wisconsin from 2019 to 2024. (All values are expressed in 2024 dollars which allows us to compare the actual purchasing power of wages.)
From 2019 to 2024, median wages grew in the U.S. and Wisconsin. National median wages grew from $23.50 to $24.87 per hour. In Wisconsin wages grew slightly faster from $23.32 to $25.01.
Wage growth was interrupted in 2022, when wages fell due to inflation. But strong economic growth and tight labor markets have supported wage increases across recent years. The current wage growth trajectory began about 10 years ago, with strong growth disrupted by the pandemic and inflation. Even taking the wage setback in 2022 into account, the wage trajectory of the last 9 years is the longest and strongest period of wage growth dating back to 1979.
2019-2024 Wage Growth Narrows Wage Inequality
W12 shows the wage gains for workers at the 20th, 50th, and 80th percentiles in both Wisconsin and the United States from 2019-2024. (Inflation is taken into account so these are changes in the purchasing power of wages.)
In a notable departure from increasing wage inequality in previous decades, lower wage workers have secured the strongest wage gains from 2019 to 2024. This is true for lower wage workers across the nation and in Wisconsin.
From 2019 to 2024, wages of higher wage workers (workers who earn more than 80% of the workforce) rose 5%. For lower wage workers (at the 20th percentile in the wage distribution) wages grew more than twice as fast, surging 13% in Wisconsin. The wage growth for low wage workers in the state is faster than the national pace of wage gains.
Lower wage workers have seized the opportunity provided by tight labor markets and moved to higher paying jobs and secured higher wages in jobs that they stay in. As a result, our wage distribution is more equal today than it was in 2019.
2019-24 Wage Trends for Race and Gender Groups
W13 shows the recent change in median wages by gender, race, and ethnicity in Wisconsin.
Black women have made the strongest wage gains in the last five years, with wages up 17%. White women (wages up 8%) and white men (wages up 5%) also moved forward. Hispanic women’s wages have not advanced at all and Hispanic men’s wages have fallen slightly. Black men’s wages show the worst trajectory over the period, with wages down 3%.
