Wages Matter
For Wisconsin’s 3 million workers, wages are the most important measure of job quality.
Wages are our clearest measure of job quality. We track wages over time to show how the quality and inequality of work are changing. The data provide some very good news – the state’s median wage, $26.17 per hour, reached a record high in inflation-adjusted wages. Wages have grown steadily in recent years, up from $24 in 2022 to $26 in 2025 (again, this corrects for inflation). Wisconsin’s 2026 wage data is not yet available, but the signs there are troubling. Inflation has risen, and wage gains have been weaker. As it did in 2022, inflation could wipe out the wage gains of 2026. The median wage provides an aggregate picture but cannot illuminate deep and shifting gaps by race, gender, ethnicity, and education, which we explore throughout this chapter as well.
This section draws on the most recent data available from the U.S. Current Population Survey, providing median hourly wages through 2025. Throughout the chapter, we take inflation into account by reporting all values in 2025 dollars. This inflation adjustment provides a view of wages in terms of consistent purchasing power. Our data cover 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.
We start with the long view. 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 and long-term trends in wages for all workers and key demographic groups. We close by focusing on wage trends from 2019-2025.
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 in the state. 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.
These last four decades contrast 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 93% while workers’ hourly pay has increased by just 34%. Productivity has grown 2.8 times as fast as pay. 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 Reach New High: $26 per hour
W2 displays median hourly wages for Wisconsin and the United States from 1979 to 2025. Wages have reached a new high.
(By adjusting for inflation and expressing all values in 2025 dollars, we can compare the actual purchasing power of wages over time.)
In 2025, Wisconsin’s median wage – $26.17 per hour – reached a new high (see W2). Workers in the state have experienced three years of solid wage growth that have more than made up for the damage to wages inflicted by the very high inflation of 2022. From 2022 to 2025, the inflation-adjusted value of wages grew by $2.00 per hour. Further, the current wage is $4.00 higher than the 2015 median. This advance in wages is unprecedented in the data we have. Real wage growth in the past decade is stronger than in any period back to 1979. The 2025 Wisconsin median wage slightly exceeds the national median (which is unusual but not unprecedented).
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 2023, 2024, and 2025, and in each of the last two years, Wisconsin has reached a record high.
2025 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.
W3 shows the gender gap between men’s and women’s wages. In 2025, men’s median wage – $28.25 – exceeded women’s median of $24.24 by $4 per hour. In Wisconsin, men’s wages are 14% higher than women’s wages.
W4 illustrates the stark difference in wages based on race, ethnicity, and gender in Wisconsin and the United States.
With a median wage of $29.37 per hour, white men have the highest wages. White women’s median wage of $24.92 is 15% lower than white men’s median. Black men’s median wage of $24.04 lags white men’s wages by 18%. Median wages for Black women ($20.67) and Hispanic men ($19.96) are roughly 30% lower than white men’s wages. Hispanic women’s wage of $18.99 is more than $10 per hour lower than white men’s median wage, leaving Hispanic women 35% behind.
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.
There has been a remarkable closing in the gender wage gap. As shown in W5, from 1979 to 2025, women’s wages grew by nearly 56%. Over the same period, men’s wages grew by just 6%. The gender gap in wages is closing as women make gains.
W6 makes it clear that within race and ethnicity groups, white women’s growing wages are driving the positive picture for women. W6 shows that white women have experienced a nearly 61% wage growth. Black and Hispanic women have also made gains – wages up 19% for Black women and 49% for Hispanic women. These are positive trends but lag well behind white women’s wage trend.
The race and ethnicity differences for men are stark as well. Men’s wage trends over 1979-2025 are much less impressive. For white men, wages grew by 10%. This is lower than the increases posted by women, but still represents the most positive trend among men. Black men’s wages grew only 3% while Hispanic men’s fell by 6%.
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 United States.
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 just 20% of the workforce and less than 80%) earns $17.84 per hour. Near the top of the wage distribution, the 80th percentile worker earns $43.09, 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 $20 per hour by 2030 would directly or indirectly raise the wages of more than one-in-four of Wisconsin workers. One-in-three women workers and half of Black and Hispanic workers would see wages go up with the minimum wage increase. In this way, raising the minimum wage can help reduce racial and gender disparities. Read more about the reach of a higher minimum wage in our report Can’t Survive on $7.25: 2026 Update.
Education and Wages
W10 demonstrates the impact of education on workers’ wages in Wisconsin.
Workers with college degrees make more money. Working Wisconsinites with bachelor’s degrees or more education earned $37.29 per hour, while those with associate’s degrees earned $25.78. 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, $22.55, are nearly the same as the wages of workers who ended their education with a high school degree (median wage $22.33). Workers without a high school diploma earned a median wage of $15 per hour.
2019-2025: Wages Have Grown After Pandemic Shutdowns
W11 focuses on recent changes in the median wage in Wisconsin and the United States from 2019 to 2025.
(All values are expressed in 2025 dollars, which allows us to compare the actual purchasing power of wages.)
From 2019 to 2025, median wages grew in the U.S. and Wisconsin. National median wages grew from $24.07 to $25.67 per hour. In Wisconsin, wages grew slightly faster from $23.88 to $26.17.
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 since 2019 is the longest and strongest period of wage growth dating back to 1979.
2019-2025: 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 2019-2025. (Inflation is taken into account so these are changes in the purchasing power of wages.)
Especially in Wisconsin, lower-wage workers have secured the strongest wage gains from 2019 to 2025. This is a notable departure from wage trends which tended to increase wage inequality in previous decades.
In Wisconsin, over 2019-2025, wages of higher-wage workers (workers who earn more than 80% of the workforce) rose to 8%. For lower-wage workers (at the 20th percentile in the wage distribution) wages grew twice as fast, surging to 16%. 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 their existing jobs. As a result, our wage distribution is more equal today than it was in 2019.
2019-2025 Wage Trends for Race and Gender Groups
W13 shows the recent change in median wages by gender, race, and ethnicity in Wisconsin.
Black women and Black men have made the strongest wage gains in the last six years, with wages up 17% and 14%, respectively. White women (wages up 11%) also secured strong wage gains in recent years. Wages are up much more modestly for Hispanic women (wages up 5.5%), white men (wages up 5.4%), and Hispanic men (wages up 4.3%).
