Tommy Washbush / Freepik
Workers walking along a graph that descends sharply, causing them to plummet.
I moved to Madison the summer of 1995 to work at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (fondly known as COWS, now renamed the High Road Strategy Center). One of my first projects was a report on the Wisconsin economy. Unveiled in 1996, the State of Working Wisconsin is released on Labor Day in honor of the working people of the state with the hope that we can draw a nuanced picture of the economy, identifying inequalities and opportunities.
We return to data year after year on jobs, unions and wages. We have written the report at the peak of booms and at the depth of recession and every point in between. Some things stay constant year-to-year, but each year is unique.
“Unique” isn’t quite a big enough word for 2025.
Sure, 2025 is defined by data that shows some short-term strengths — the state hit a record number of jobs in July 2025, and the median wage for 2024 (which is as recent as it gets) also reached $25.01, a record high. Unemployment has hovered around a very low 3%.
Of course, the news isn’t only good. Wisconsin’s jobs are growing at less than half the national rate, and the 2025 pace of job growth is slow. The national jobs report in July was so much worse than expected that President Donald Trump baselessly called the data “concocted.” The job market is cooling off and the strong economic recovery following the pandemic shutdowns may be coming to an end.
Underneath the business cycle questions, though, are the long-term inequities and job quality issues. In Wisconsin, economic inequality by geography, gender, race and ethnicity is substantial and long-standing. Workers in low-wage jobs face not just low income, but also volatile schedules and weak benefits. Unions, which can be a force for improving job quality, are plummeting in the state despite increasing interest in and support for unions.
In a usual year, that would be the story.
But the Trump administration’s abrupt, anti-worker, and often chaotic policy work is the story now. In the coming year, working people will contend with the economic impact 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 policies are disturbing because they undermine workers’ power on all fronts. Consider the macroeconomic impacts of the administration’s hallmarks: high tariffs and hostility to immigrants. Tariffs are taxes on imports and will raise prices. The average family will face a tariff price tag of $2,400. Employers are already complaining about the impact of the immigration enforcement raids on their workforce and customers. In response to employer complaints, the Trump administration announced and then quickly withdrew a directive to ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to end enforcement in farms, hotels and restaurants. Uncertainty, higher prices, and an inability to fill positions all constrain economic growth. Many analysts believe the weak jobs numbers in July offer a hint of a coming economic slowdown because of these policies. As the economy slows, unemployment rises, and workers will lose bargaining power.
The administration’s broad and savage anti-worker agenda reduces workers’ power further. In an unprecedented act of union busting, the administration has ended collective bargaining rights of one million federal workers. The administration is also tilting the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees and protects union rights, to increase its responsiveness to employers. To make labor standards enforcement more employer-friendly, the administration gutted the federal workforce that protects occupational health and safety and enforces federal anti-discrimination laws for federal contractors. The administration also rescinded an existing executive order that established minimum wages for federal contractors which increased wages for nearly 400,000 workers.
And finally, the federal budget reconciliation package, enacted this summer, contains hundreds of provisions with disturbing implications for working people. By permanently extending the first-term Trump tax cuts for the very wealthy, the new budget delivers $1 trillion over the next 10 years to the nation’s richest 1% and increases the national budget deficit to unprecedented levels. Analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that the annual tax break to Wisconsin’s richest 1% will be $67,000. And the tax break for the bottom fifth of households in the state? Just $70.
The federal budget, signed into law in July, will also take health insurance away from some 70,000 Wisconsinites, strip food support from 90,000 residents, and substantially reduce the financial aid of more than 70,000 low-income students in colleges and universities across the state.
You might hope that at least data to understand the economy is something we can all agree on. Um. No. In July, Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, making clear that future appointees will be expected to produce “data” that confirms his narrative. But taking away reliable data also undermines workers’ power — if unemployment grows but we no longer provide reliable data on it, laid-off workers are more likely to see their situation as unique and personal rather than collective.
Despite its occasionally populist rhetoric, the administration is building an economy that undermines the opportunities and security of working people. And they want to tell you how it is working, rather than prove their case with real data. 2025 is a year of deep disruption; Wisconsin workers will pay the price.
Laura Dresser is a labor economist and the associate director of High Road Strategy Center. She has co-authored The State of Working Wisconsin since its inaugural edition in 1996.
