One step forward, two steps back

Last week I opened up the Business Section of the Wisconsin State Journal and found this headline:

State sees more factory jobs after years of loss

I was thrilled until I saw the headline of the article right below it.

Wages slip for manufacturing hires

Wisconsin, and the rest of the country for that matter, cannot keep this up much longer. While it is great news that our state finally gained some manufacturing jobs in 2005 after years of decline, if those jobs are paying half of what they used to pay, it may not be a net gain for our state.

The U.S. economy is heavily dependent upon middle-class goods consumption. If we continue to lose jobs that pay family-supporting wages and replace them with those that don't, the middle-class will shrink dramatically and so will its buying power.

The National Association of Manufacturers, which would never be mistaken for a liberal group, issued a report recently that forecasted serious threats to America's long-term economic growth and living standards due to downward trends in U.S. manufacturing. Wisconsin lost more than 90,000 manufacturing employees between 1999 and 2004. Many of those people found new jobs, but the jobs they found most likely had lower wages and few if any benefits.

That use to mean that the new jobs they found were outside of the manufacturing sector, but now jobs with low wages and skimpy benefits are starting to show up there too. An article in the Chicago Tribune highlights just how severe the wage cuts have become. The article pointed to the good news that Caterpiller in Decatur was going to add hundreds of new jobs, but the starting wages were being cut from $20 to $10 an hour. That makes these jobs not much better than the service industry.


Overall, one step forward for jobs in Wisconsin, two steps back for Wisconsin workers.