Construction workers install finishing touches at a Scout Motors electric vehicle assembly plant in Blythewood, S.C., in February. Health care and construction hiring helped boost January jobs, but downward revisions for the whole of 2025 marked the lowest increase in U.S. jobs outside a recession since 2003. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
U.S. jobs increased by 130,000 in January, buoyed by hires in health care, social assistance and construction.
But in another sign of anemic hiring last year, estimates for 2025 were revised down by more than a million jobs to a level of low growth rarely seen outside of recessions.
The revisions show the United States added only 181,000 jobs last year — the first year of the new Trump administration — one of the lowest increases ever outside recessions.
Jobs dropped in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and in 2008-2009 in the Great Recession, but otherwise the last time was a lower increase in jobs was in 2003, when they rose 124,000 after two years of decreases, during a period labeled a “jobless recovery” by economists.
Economist Claudia Sahm, who had predicted 2025 would be “a year without jobs, but no recession” before the annual revisions based on more complete data, said Wednesday that “the downward revisions are huge” in an X post.
The new revisions changed the most for January 2025, which went from a gain of 111,000 to a loss of 48,000 jobs. Only one month, October, saw an upward revision: A reported loss of 173,000 jobs was trimmed to a loss of 140,000 jobs. There are now four months of job losses reported last year, up from three.
Overall, the number of total U.S. jobs at the end of the year was revised down by 1,029,000, from a little more than 159.5 million to a little less than 158.5 million.
State by state jobs estimates for January are not yet available.
There have been about 29,000 layoffs announced so far in 2026,according to notices tracked by WARN Tracker. They include 7,705 layoffs in California, 6,109 in New Jersey, 3,999 in Pennsylvania, 3,483 in Washington state and 2,607 in Texas.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Democratic lawmakers propose capping annual rent increases and adding other resident protections as corporate ownership expands in manufactured home communities.
Alliant Energy is asking state regulators to approve custom electric rates for Meta’s large data center campus in Beaver Dam, but the heavily redacted document hides details from the public, including the amount of energy the project is expected to use.
Gov. Tony Evers vetoes legislation in April 2024 that would have eliminated work permits for 14- and 15-year-olds. A large child labor case against a Burger King franchise owner demonstrates the importance of the work permit requirement in educating employers and youth workers about the state's child labor regulations, says Amy Pechacek, the head of Wisconsin's Department of Workforce Development. (Governor's Facebook page photo)
A child labor investigation that uncovered more than 1,600 violations of Wisconsin law at more than 100 Burger King restaurants was probably the largest case of its kind in the state’s history, according to the head of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.
DWD has ordered Chicago-based Cave Enterprises to pay more than 600 Wisconsin teens back pay as well as damages totaling $237,436. The company owes the state an additional $828,000, according to DWD — $500 for every one of the 1,656 violations uncovered in an extensive audit of the company’s payroll and employment records.
The company has until Feb. 25 to pay the back wages and penalties, although it also has the option of challenging DWD’s actions in court.
Cave Enterprises has not responded to requests for comment about DWD’s audit findings, which the department announced Friday.
Amy Pechacek, the department’s secretary-designee, said in an interview after the agency announced the results of its investigation that the case was the largest one DWD could document.
“Since the records are somewhat limited in terms of going back several decades, we just chose to be safe and said this was the largest violation we have in modern history,” Pechacek said.
Cave Enterprises received a formal letter notifying it of the investigation findings on Thursday, according to DWD. But in the months before, there were repeated communications between DWD auditors and management personnel for the company, Pechacek told the Wisconsin Examiner.
The investigation was triggered by a series of complaints DWD’s Equal Rights Division received in 2024, Pechacek said. The division’s responsibilities include enforcing Wisconsin’s child labor and wage laws.
Pattern of company behavior
The complaints in 2024 prompted investigators to look back through department records. Investigators turned up 33 previous complaints in the years since 2020. Pechacek said those complaints were resolved individually.
The number of complaints, however, showed investigators a disturbing pattern in “how this employer interacts with its minor-age workforce,” Pechacek said. “And due to that, they then said, this warrants a very deep-dive, intensive audit about their practices as it relates to employing minors here in the state of Wisconsin.”
DWD has 25 auditors who review workforce practices in response to complaints, eight of them focusing on minors.
“So this was a large undertaking,” Pechacek said of the Cave Enterprises review. “They poured their heart and soul into this, and we’re just really proud of that work and what this means in terms of making sure our youth can engage and work in a meaningful and safe way in our state.”
The audit showed that the problems weren’t confined to just a handful of the more than 100 Burger King locations that Cave owned between 2023 and 2025, the audit’s time span. There were violations found at 103 of the company’s stores, according to DWD.
Work permits underscore child labor rules
In the letter to Cave detailing the audit findings, DWD reported that 593 14- and 15-year-olds started work without required work permits — 84% of the company’s employees in that age group, according to the agency. At a Green Bay Burger King, one teen started working at the age of 13, auditors reported — too young for that work under Wisconsin law.
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development’s secretary designee, Amy Pechacek, right, with Gov. Tony Evers at a DWD event in Madison in 2023. (Photo courtesy of DWD)
In 2024, Republican majorities in both houses of the state Legislature passed bills that would have repealed Wisconsin’s work-permit requirement for 14- and 15-year-olds. Supporters of the repeal argued they amounted to a needless bureaucratic roadblock and discouraged young people from working.
Democrats opposed the bill and Gov. Tony Evers vetoed it. Pechacek said cases like the audit of Cave Enterprises demonstrate the value of the work permit requirement.
“Every time a permit is even requested for a minor child, there is an explanation of obligations that are sent to the employer as it relates to child labor laws,” Pechacek said. Those informational documents list Wisconsin’s wage and hour laws, the requirements for breaks and the restrictions on what machines minors can operate under state law. The parents, who must sign the work permit, get the same information.
“We want to be able to allow youth to participate in a safe manner that doesn’t impact or impair their ability to still go to school and still be children, but also help out our local economies and our businesses,” Pechacek said. “These duties of the employer and the rights of the minor-aged worker are continually enforced and communicated throughout the process.”
The widespread lack of work permits at the Cave Burger Kings means that neither the employer nor the teenage workers would have received that communication at hiring. Despite that, each of the previous 33 complaints would have resulted “in another explanation of the law throughout the complaint process,” Pechacek said. “So there are many opportunities for this employer — and for every employer — to get it right.”
The audit also found 627 workers 17 or younger — 45% of the company’s minor employees — who worked longer than six hours without a required 30-minute meal break.
“All minor employees under the age of 18 must have a 30-minute, duty-free break during shifts of six or more consecutive hours,” states the DWD audit report sent to Cave management. “Multiple shorter breaks totaling 30 minutes are not a lawful substitute for the required 30-minute break.”
Breaks that are less than 30 minutes must be paid under Wisconsin law, regardless of the worker’s age, the DWD report states. Unpaid breaks must be at least 30 minutes, with no duties during that time and with the employee free to leave the worksite.
“We found multiple instances of employees taking unpaid breaks of less than 30 minutes in length,” the DWD letter states — one of the reasons for back pay owed to teen workers.
Large Wisconsin footprint
The Cave Enterprises website states the company currently owns 100 Wisconsin restaurants and that it has the largest number of Burger King franchises under a single owner in the country. The company also operates 77 Burger King franchises in seven other states.
The company’s list of Wisconsin locations has 105 restaurants, but internet search results for three of them — two in Milwaukee and one in Waukesha — describe them as permanently closed.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s review Friday of a job portal on the company website showed 379 openings at the company’s Wisconsin Burger King locations.
Pechacek acknowledged that filling job openings has been a stiff challenge for employers for years.
“We know that youth are a very important part of our workforce, especially during worker shortages,” Pechacek said. “There is no excuse ever to violate labor laws — especially when it comes to protecting our youth, but for any worker.”
DWD has an outreach operation and can send personnel to help train employers about the ins and outs of state and federal child labor regulations. The department has videos available online along with other information in plain language, she said.
“We aren’t here just to be a compliance arm. We would rather have this conversation before any type of laws are violated and before anybody’s rights are infringed on,” Pechacek said.
“So there are many opportunities for education and compliance before forfeitures and penalties even come into play — or large-scale audits. And we are always available to have those conversations with any employer and any minor-aged child or parent who is unclear about what the rules are.”
An advocacy group's report highlights the financial impact Trump administration policies is having on Wisconsin residents. (Getty Images)
Democrats hoping to end GOP control of the state Legislature and Congress are stepping uptheir argument that the administration of President Donald Trump along with Republican majorities in both the U.S. and Wisconsin capitols have driven up costs for average members of the public.
On Monday, an advocacy group that opposes the Trump administration released asix-page document that focuses on Wisconsin examples of higher costs across the board, from groceries to utilities to health care. The report, from Defend America Action, draws on news reports, government data and polling to argue that federal policies “are ripping away Wisconsinites’ economic security.”
The opening page of the document — signed by five state Senate Democrats and Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski — declares, “Between his massive cuts to government spending, the Trump-GOP Big, Ugly Bill, and his disastrous tariff regime, Trump’s agenda is hurting the local economy in all areas, stoking a dire affordability crisis as food prices, energy bills, health care costs, and housing costs spike.”
State Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee)
“What I am hearing in the district every day is that ‘Everything is getting more expensive. I am working more and I am getting less in return,’” state Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), one of the signers, told the Wisconsin Examiner via email.
“The common theme here is who is looking out for them,” Drake said. “Trump and the Republican Party are praising higher stocks, but that investment is not trickling down to working families, and they are paying the price.”
Combining the answers of people who are “very concerned” and “somewhat concerned,” the report cites the finding that 89% of people who answered a Marquette Law School poll released Oct. 29, 2025, were worried about the state of the economy. The poll also found 95% of those surveyed were concerned about inflation.
The same poll found that 80% of Wisconsin voters surveyed were concerned about housing affordability, including 53% who answered that they were “very concerned.”
The October poll was the most recent from Marquette Law School focusing on Wisconsin’s 2026 elections and voter issues. (Two subsequent Marquette poll reports, in early November and late January, surveyed national samples on national issues, focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court.)
The report marshals data from across nearly all sectors of the economy. It cites the persistence of higher grocery prices and increases inhealth insurance premiums, particularly for people who buy their own coverage through the HealthCare.gov marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act.
Enhanced subsidies to lower the cost of those premiums expired at the end of 2025. A bill to extend them for another three years has passed the U.S. House but has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.
Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska), who also signed the report, said in an interview that he recently heard from a farmer in his district whose insurance through the marketplace, which used to cost $50 per month last year, is now $500 per month due to the loss of the subsidies.
“It went from $600 a year, I guess, to $6,000,” Pfaff said. Referring to the federal government’s decision to end enhanced subsidies, he added, “When we are telling the self-employed and those at small businesses that purchase their health insurance though the marketplace that, you know what, we’re not going to do that anymore because of partisan politics, that causes real consternation.”
The report also cites recent data showing acooling job market and cuts toclean energy projects that had been initiated under President Joe Biden. It blamesagricultural economic turmoil on see-sawing tariffs as well as, in some sectors, the Trump administration’s focus on deporting immigrants.
State Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska)
Farmers “are being squeezed on both ends,” Pfaff said, with the rising costs for seed, fertilizer, machinery repairs and other inputs.
“When farmers need certainty, you add on top of that the fact that they continue to struggle to move their crop commodities in the marketplace because of this ping pong that’s being played at the national level by the White House when it comes to trade policy,” Pfaff said. “When you have a situation in which grocery prices are rising, but yet farmers struggle in order to put a crop in the ground, there’s something wrong.”
The Defend America Action report pins responsibility for other impending cost increases on the 2025 federal tax- and spending-cut bill that Republicans in Congress passed and Trump signed in July. The bill rolled back clean energy tax credits enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and also made changes to Medicaid and to the federal Supplemental Food Assistance Program (SNAP).
Aclean energy advocacy organization has estimated that canceling clean energy tax credits will raise utility costs for Wisconsin consumers by 13% to 22%. Gov Tony Evershas projected Medicaid changes could cost Wisconsin $284 million.
Aseparate report Feb. 3 from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that overall the megabill — referred to by Trump and Republican authors as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — “will redistribute trillions of dollars upward over the next decade, making it harder for families with modest incomes to meet their basic needs while helping those at the top accumulate more wealth.”
The bill cuts taxes by $4.5 trillion, primarily benefiting the wealthiest households, the CBBP reported. The bottom 20% of households by income “will lose more from the cuts in health coverage, food assistance, and other programs than they will gain in tax cuts,” the CBPP said, citing Congressional Budget Office data.
For the bottom 10% of earners, average household incomes will fall by $1,200, or 3.1%, the report said, and the top 10% of earners will see their household incomes rise by $13,600 on average, or 2.7%.
Drake told the Wisconsin Examiner that she believes the Trump administration’s actions attacking democracy and targeting immigrants are aimed at distracting people from policies that redistribute wealth upwards.
“Affordability is the underlying issue affecting everyone regardless of who you are,” said Drake. “Instead of helping people and holding those with the most power accountable, he wants Americans to blame our neighbors and communities of different backgrounds for the reasoning behind their struggles.”
The state's Department of Workforce Development is ordering the operator of more than 100 Wisconsin-based Burger King restaurants to pay back $237,437 in wages owed to teen employees.
A Madison Burger King owned by Cave Enterprises of Chicago. The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development has found more than 1,600 violations of state child labor laws by Cave, which owns 100 Burger King outlets in Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
This report has been updated.
The owner of more than 100 Wisconsin Burger King franchises will be required to pay more than $1 million after Wisconsin’s labor department found more than 1,600 violations of state child labor and wage laws, officials said Friday.
The violations took place during a two-year period ending in January 2025, the state Department of Workforce Development reported. The case involves the largest number of child labor and wage payment violations identified by the department “in modern Wisconsin history,” according to the office of Gov. Tony Evers.
“We have a responsibility to make sure kids who are working are protected from exploitation, predatory employer practices, and being subjected to hazardous or illegal working conditions, and that’s a responsibility we must take seriously,” Evers said in a statement released Friday.
The franchise owner, Chicago-based Cave Enterprises, operates Burger King locations in eight states, according to the Cave Enterprises website. Wisconsin has 100 of those restaurants currently — more than any of the other states.
On Thursday, DWD informed Cave that investigators reviewed records from the company from January 2023 to January 2025.
A letter from DWD to Cave states that the company:
Employed 593 14- and 15-year-olds who started work without required work permits;
Failed to provide a required 30-minute meal break for 627 minors who worked at least one shift of six hours or longer without a break;
Failed to pay required overtime to 67 workers who were 16 or 17 and who worked at least one shift longer than 10 hours — after which state law requires payment at time and a half;
Violated state requirements on permitted work hours for 369 minors.
DWD “counted violations of Wisconsin’s Employment of Minors laws by counting only one violation per child per type of violation found,” the department stated in a cover letter accompanying the notification of violations. By that count, “Employer violated Wisconsin’s Employment of Minors laws and related regulations at least 1,656 times during the investigative period.”
DWD told Cave the company owes the employees a total of $3,498 in back wages, $1,994 in unpaid overtime wages, and $231,944 in wage penalties — liquidated damages amounting to 200% of the wage shortfall.
Cave also must “immediately change its business practices to ensure that it is no longer in violation of Wisconsin’s Employment of Minors laws and related regulations which were found to be violated,” the investigation report states.
The cover letter states Cave also must pay DWD a direct penalty of $828,000 — $500 for each of the 1,656 violations, according to the department. The company must make the payments within 20 days to resolve the case.
Cave has not replied to an email message from the Wisconsin Examiner sent Friday to the company’s human resources manager seeking comment on the DWD’s findings.
DWD launched the investigation after receiving several complaints in 2024 and subsequently reviewing department records, which produced 33 previous complaints against the business for wage payment and child labor violations from 2020 through 2023.
Those complaints were resolved individually, DWD Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview Friday.
But they also pointed to a larger pattern in “how this employer interacts with its minor-aged workforce,” Pechacek said. Investigators decided that “this warrants a very deep-dive, intensive audit about their practices as it relates to employing minors here in the state of Wisconsin.”
On Jan. 23, 2025, DWD requested records from Cave on the company’s employment of minors younger than 18 going back to Jan. 1, 2023. The records started coming in on March 4, 2025, with the last batch received Nov. 11, 2025, according to DWD.
DWD’s auditors “literally reviewed thousands and thousands and thousands of records for months,” Pechaeck said.
The DWD letters to the company state that both the payments for the employees, which must be made with individual checks for each worker, and the penalty that is owed to the state must be sent to DWD’s Equal Rights Division, which investigates child labor and other workplace violations.
In 2024, Eversvetoed a bill passed by Republicans in the Legislature that would haveeliminated a requirement that 14- and 15-year-olds in Wisconsin have a work permit approved by their parents in order to take a job.
The legislation was supported by Wisconsin Independent Business and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, according tolobbying records posted by the Wisconsin Ethics Commission.
It was also promoted by the Opportunity Solutions Project, the lobbying arm of the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability, which Wisconsin Watchreported had gotten “attention for its successful drive to relax child labor restrictions in Iowa and Arkansas.”
“After years of Republican lawmakers working to get rid of Wisconsin’s basic child labor law protections, I’m proud my administration is working to do the opposite by making sure bad actors are held accountable for taking advantage of kids in the workplace,” Evers said Friday.
When DWD issues work permits, it also sends employers letters informing them about the details of Wisconsin’s child labor regulations, including the limits on hours of work and requirements such as the one for paid meal breaks after six hours of work.
“It’s just not in the best interest of the youth, our families, or even the business to be using workers and youth workers in a way that again is really going to potentially impact their success in other areas that we want them to be protected in,” Pechacek said.
“We have to put some guard rails around utilizing youth workforce so that we can protect them,” she added. “That also protects the businesses. These kids are going to school all day. They need breaks. They need to be able to focus on also being a kid.”
Cave was founded in 1999 by Adam Velarde with a Burger King outlet in Lemont, Illinois, and grew to be the largest group of Burger King franchises with a single owner, according to the company website.
“The majority of Cave’s growth has been through purchasing distressed restaurants and improving the value of the location and brand through hard work, smart decisions and dedication to the guests,” the company states. “We pride ourselves on being leaders in the Burger King Brand in traffic and profit growth.”
While the investigation found minors employed at 104 Wisconsin locations that Cave owned, the company’s current list of 100 locations would appear to suggest that Cave closed or divested at least four restaurants sometime in the last three years.
Cave also operates four locations in Iowa, 28 in Illinois, one in Indiana, eight in Michigan, 13 in Minnesota, one in Nebraska and 22 in South Dakota.
This report was updated Friday following an interview with DWD Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek.
As international trade through the Port of Duluth-Superior drops sharply, an adviser points to tools like foreign trade zones and smarter shipping strategies.
Business groups are suing the city of Port Washington, challenging the legality of a proposed ordinance that would give residents more power over local development incentives.
On Thursday, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources granted approval to mining company GreenLight Wisconsin’s plans to drill up to 20 holes across 15 sites as it explores the Bend deposit in Taylor County near Medford.
A second data center development is being proposed in Beaver Dam. Local officials say would be much smaller than Meta’s data center campus currently under construction.
Minimum-wage workers in 19 states saw their paychecks increase this year. But Wisconsin hasn’t changed its minimum wage — just $7.25 per hour — for 17 years, shrinking the buying power of the lowest-earning workers.
Wisconsin ties its minimum wage to the federal level, which hasn’t budged for its longest stretch in history. Had Congress indexed the wage to inflation in 2009, it would have risen to $10.88 in 2025. That’s a difference of $145.20 over a 40-hour workweek.
Elsewhere, 34 states, territories and districts have set minimum wages above $7.25.
Neighboring Minnesota raised its minimum wage from $11.13 to $11.41 this year, while Michigan’s leaped from $12.48 to $13.73. Illinois kept its threshold at $15, the highest level among noncoastal states.
In 2024, about 1% of the Wisconsin workforce earned at or below the state’s minimum wage. Those people generally worked as salespeople, automotive service technicians or food preparation workers, U.S. Census data show.
Wisconsin’s tipped workers have an even lower minimum wage of $2.33 per hour, slightly higher than the $2.13 federal minimum, which has not changed since 1991.
Meanwhile, the average living wage for a single adult with no children in Wisconsin in 2025 is $20.96, according to MIT’s living wage calculator, with higher costs in metropolitan areas — including $22.18 in Madison and $21.07 in Milwaukee and Waukesha. The living wage is significantly higher for adults who raise children and lower for people living with a working partner.
New York campaign sparked ‘Fight for $15’
Campaigns to raise the minimum wage have regularly drawn national headlines. In 2012, fast-food workers and their supporters began calling for a $15-per-hour minimum wage in New York City. Their victory inspired a broader ‘Fight for $15’ movement, including in Wisconsin, as Wisconsin Watch previously reported.
This year, The Living Wage Coalition — a group of labor and progressive organizations — launched a campaign to raise Wisconsin’s minimum wage to $20 per hour, calling the status quo far below a reasonable standard of living for the lowest-wage workers.
An increase to $15 per hour would be politically popular and directly or indirectly raise the wages of 231,800 (18%) women workers, 36,200 (25.6%) Black workers and 50,200 (26.6%) Hispanic workers in Wisconsin — narrowing gender and racial wealth and income gaps that are some of the largest in the nation, according to a 2025 High Road Strategy Center report. The University of Wisconsin-Madison-based “think-and-do tank” focuses on solutions to social problems — including those related to the environment, opportunity and democratic institutions.
Still, multiple bills to raise Wisconsin’s minimum wage — largely proposed by Democrats — have stalled in the Legislature. Republican lawmakers have cited concerns about burdening small businesses.
Higher wage ‘has to come from somewhere’
Minimum-wage hikes — depending on the size — can bring a mix of positive and negative economic consequences, according to Callie Freitag, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Social Work.
“The good thing is that earnings would go up for workers. Employers would raise wages and be able to pay workers more,” Freitag said. “But the money to pay workers more has to come from somewhere.”
Economists worry that dramatic minimum-wage hikes could lead to higher consumer costs — or prompt businesses to cut worker hours or eliminate their jobs entirely, Freitag added.
The key would be an increase that benefits the lowest-paid workers without significantly affecting the broader economy. But it’s unclear what that sweet spot is.
Conditions of the labor market — the supply and demand for workers — shape wages across most of the economy. Wages typically increase when there are more openings than workers, and they decrease when there are few openings for available workers.
Setting the minimum wage close to or below an equilibrium wage — where the demand for labor matches the supply — only minimally affects wages across the market, economists suggest.
States that hiked minimum wages saw slightly higher gains across the lowest-tier wages (the bottom 10%) between 2019 and 2024, but not enough to claim a correlation, an analysis by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found. A range of factors could have shaped the wage increases, which also played out in the Midwest.
Wisconsin has seen slightly faster growth in bottom-tier wages than its neighbors — even without increasing the minimum wage. The state’s bottom-tier wages increased from $10.92 hourly in 2009 to $14.58, Wisconsin Watch found by analyzing EPI’s data.
Bigger hikes strain employers
While basic economic principles suggest that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would decrease the hiring of unskilled workers by 1 to 2%, recent studies suggest an even smaller shift, or no effect at all.
Most minimum-wage studies published between 2004 and 2024 have shown little or no job loss, Ben Zipperer, an EPI senior economist, found.
Researchers tend to focus most on cities and states that have significantly increased their minimum wage. Seattle, Washington, which has hiked its threshold annually since 2015, has among the highest in the country at $21.30 this year.
A sign is seen during a Wisconsin State Capitol press conference about raising Wisconsin’s minimum wage, June 17, 2021. (Isaac Wasserman / Wisconsin Watch)
In a 2022 study, University of Washington researchers found that Seattle’s minimum wage increase to $11 hourly in 2015 “had an insignificant effect on employment,” but a spike to $13 in 2016 “resulted in a large drop in employment.”
But the findings might not directly apply to other places, the researchers found, because industries and the makeup of the labor force might look and act differently elsewhere.
A separate University of Washington study found that a minimum-wage increase to $15 hourly affected most child care businesses, which commonly responded by raising tuition and reducing staff hours or total number of staff — potentially harming staff and lower-wage customers.
What work is worth
“Minimum wage legislation commonly has two stated objectives: the reduction of employer control of wages; and the abolition of poverty,” George Stiegler, a leader of the Chicago school of economics, wrote in 1946 — an era when Congress was debating bigger increases to the minimum wage in the policy’s early years.
But Stiegler was pessimistic about the prospect that minimum-wage hikes were the best way to eliminate poverty. He instead called for lawmakers to grant lower-income families other forms of relief, including tax cuts and credits.
That spirit was reflected in the “no tax on tips” bill, which the Wisconsin Assembly passed this month to benefit tipped workers.
Still, Laura Dresser, associate director of the High Road Strategy Center, views the minimum wage as an important floor to benefit workers at the margins and signal “work is worth this.”
“People who are working full time should be able to afford life,” she said. “At $7.25 per hour, there’s almost nothing you can afford, and it feels far below what a wage floor really should function as.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Pouches are the fastest growing nicotine product on the market in America. Studies show that while they may help addicted people lower risk, they're also a potential gateway for young people.
Analysts for state utility regulators and interest groups say a proposal from We Energies for special electric rates charged to data centers could pose risks for other customers’ utility bills.
The Madison suburb of DeForest, where a $12 billion data center proposal has been in development for months, abruptly announced the data center “is not feasible.”
Residential and commercial development in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake City is pictured in July 2024. A new study found Utah median household incomes increased at a higher rate than any other state over the past 50 years. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Household incomes have grown in nearly every state over the past 50 years, but a new study concludes that growth has been uneven across the country.
An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, released Tuesday from the Urban Institute’s Center for Local Finance and Growth, found inflation-adjusted incomes in Western, mid-Atlantic and New England states have grown the most since 1970, while incomes in Midwestern states have grown the least.
Between 1970 and 2023, Utah household incomes increased at a higher rate than any other state: The median income went up 78%, an increase of $40,820 in inflation-adjusted dollars to $93,421. Utah was followed by Colorado, New Hampshire, California, Arizona and Virginia, all of which saw more than 60% growth in median household incomes adjusted for inflation.
Nationally, median household incomes grew by an average of 32%.
The study found only one state saw inflation-adjusted incomes drop over the past five decades: West Virginia’s median household income fell by 0.4%, from $56,161 to $55,948 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
West Virginia had the second-lowest household income in the study, ranking ahead of only Mississippi’s $54,203. Massachusetts ranked the highest, with a median household income of $99,858.
The Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank, found that rates of state sales and income taxes had no association with changes in median household income. The analysis also found states with colder temperatures and higher property taxes saw greater median income growth, despite popular notions that lower property taxes and warm temperatures can lead to more prosperity.
The factors most strongly associated with household income growth were educational attainment and increases in the percentage of immigrants in the state population, the study concluded.
“This could be because immigration leads to economic growth, immigrants seek out growing areas, or both,” the study said.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
On July 4th, in the towns and counties of rural western Wisconsin, there were celebrations like on any other Independence Day: grilling bratwurst, drinking Leinenkugel’s, fireworks showering high in the summer night.
That very same day, a thousand miles away in Washington, DC, HR1— also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) — was signed into law. Yet for people here, the passage of the bill was a mere blip in the national headlines. It was not apparent that it would become an economic earthquake, triggering a tsunami of devastating after-effects soon to crash down on our rural communities.
The massive tax cut and spending bill is the most dramatic restructuring of federal budget priorities in six decades. The president called the OBBBA his “greatest victory” and the “most popular bill ever signed.” The White House issued only a scant 237-word press release summarizing the 900-page law; the substance of the law itself was barely mentioned. When it was enacted, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they knew “little or nothing” about what was in the bill.
When asked about his support of the bill, my own representative from Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, Derrick Van Orden, dismissed any suggestion that the White House had influenced his vote. “The president of the United States didn’t give us an assignment. We’re not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I’m a member of Congress, I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites.”
The OBBBA permanently extends the 2017 tax cuts and locks in a historic upward transfer of wealth. The top 1% of households receive an average tax cut of $66,000. Working families earning $53,000 or less get a tax cut of just $325. Roughly $1 trillion dollars will flow to the richest households over the next decade, while Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and health coverage are drastically scaled back, pushing 15 million people off insurance.
‘I want to be part of a strategy, something that’s actually effective’
Last August, 70 of us gathered on a Saturday in Woodville, Wisconsin, population 1,400, with the understanding that something consequential was happening in our nation, yet struggling to figure out how we can respond. We filled a community center on Main Street for six hours: teachers, farmers, retirees, retail workers, students, small business owners. People brought notebooks and coffee. The windows were open. Ceiling fans spun slowly overhead.
“I’m tired of complaining, feeling like a victim, worried about what’s going to happen next,” one of our members put it plainly. “I want to be part of a strategy, something that’s actually effective.”
I organize with Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW). Our work has always started from a simple question: How does power move in the places we live? Since the organization began, our focus has been on local issues like housing, agriculture and rural broadband. But, at that meeting in Woodville, we were trying to name what was happening: how the political chaos in our federal government was flowing down to our families, counties, schools, cities, hospitals, town boards. And, most importantly, what we could actually do about it.
GROWW members Joan Pougiales, Allison Wilder, Stephanie May, Abi Micheau, Ryan Jones, Abe Smith, Jennifer McKanna, and Tina Lee | Photo courtesy GROWW
That day in Woodville we made a plan. It did not involve protest or messaging. Our organizing has never been about reacting the fastest or shouting the loudest. Power is built methodically: identifying who makes decisions, who feels the consequences, and where solidarity can be established and strengthened before a harm is normalized and written off as inevitable. That is why we started with listening.
“Most Americans don’t realize how dramatically state and local governments — which most directly affect their daily lives — are about to change.”
– Eric Schnurer, public policy consultant
During the following three months we sat down face to face with nearly 100 local leaders across four counties. We met in offices, conference rooms and coffee shops. We spoke with school superintendents, sheriffs, county administrators, hospital executives, clergy, elected officials, business owners. We asked the same questions over and over: what were people experiencing in their jobs, what pressures were they under, what was keeping them up at night?
Many people we spoke with were overwhelmed by the effort required to stay focused on their jobs: the to-do lists, budgets, hiring, planning. One program director told us her job was mostly “putting out fires.” When we asked how they were reacting to federal policy changes, most people didn’t have much to say. Unless it was affecting them today, they didn’t have the luxury to worry about it.
Each conversation made clear how county governments in rural Wisconsin are lifelines, not faceless bureaucracies. They plow snow, run elections, maintain roads, administer BadgerCare and SNAP, respond to mental health crises, operate nursing homes, and answer 911 calls. And they are already stretched thin.
Funding was the issue mentioned the most. A county administrator walked us through the elaborate gymnastics required to balance a county budget under state-imposed levy limits that make raising revenue nearly impossible: wheel taxes, bond sales, consolidating services. One-time fixes layered on top of structural gaps. Again, it came back to resources. Not culture wars, not ideology. Money.
Delaying the pain
What surprised us most was what we did not hear. Despite anxiety about shrinking budgets, very few people mentioned the One Big Beautiful Bill. It had not yet made a mark on their daily work. That is not accidental. The new law is designed to delay the pain, disperse responsibility, and conceal the damage out of public view until it feels inevitable.
We decided to look into the law’s ramifications. We did our own research, and what we learned is that rural and small-town communities in western Wisconsin are in for a slow-motion fiscal disaster, and that regular people will be the ones who pay the price.
Starting in 2027, the federal government is scheduled to cut its share of SNAP administrative costs in half. In counties like Dunn, that shift could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in new local costs. A smaller administrative budget means fewer staff, which means slower processing, higher error rates, and federal penalties that reduce funding even further. The OBBBA seems designed to trigger countless downward spirals that degrade programs until they can be declared broken.
The repercussions for Medicaid follow the same pattern. At Golden Age Manor, the beloved county-run nursing home in Amery, where most of the services are Medicaid funded, even modest reimbursement cuts will translate into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars lost each year. At the same time, more uninsured residents will still need care.
Across our counties, more than 10,000 people rely on ACA Marketplace coverage for their health insurance. Since federal tax credits expired at the end of 2025, families face premium increases averaging around $1,600 a year. Some will pay far more. Many will drop coverage altogether. When they do, costs will shift to county-funded behavioral health systems and other services already operating at the limits of their resources.
One sheriff described what that will look like in practice: “When someone is in a mental health crisis, our deputies already spend hours driving them across the state because there are no beds here,” he said. “If people lose coverage, those crises do not go away. They show up as 911 calls.”
We must act before the tsunami arrives
A tsunami is set in motion by a distant earthquake that no one feels. Life happens on shore while energy gathers fiercely far out at sea. Only a seismograph sounds the alarm. Once the wave arrives, entire cities are engulfed, communities washed out to sea. Trump’s massive tax cut and spending law was that earthquake. We have decided to act before the wave arrives.
Local governments will be forced to navigate what policy expert Eric Schnurer described as “fiscal and operational crises,” but few people will be able to connect what happens to a bill passed last year. “Most Americans don’t realize how dramatically state and local governments — which most directly affect their daily lives — are about to change.”
This fight will not be won by politicians, consultants, or pollsters. It will be won by regular people who have decided to build a movement town by town, county by county, state by state.
County budget hearings were held in November. They often happen with no public comment, gaveled in and gaveled out in a matter of minutes. Last year we showed up and filled the rooms. We brought letters we had drafted, breaking down projected budget impacts county by county. We delivered testimony from the podium. Our goal was not to blame our county leaders, but to signal our alignment with them.
After one hearing, a county administrator, a self-identified fiscal conservative, met with us and said, “Every point you raised in your letter was correct. Our county government has to brace for what’s coming, and you made that clear to everyone in the room.”
The people who will be hit hardest
We know our county boards are not responsible for causing this disaster, yet they will be forced to deal with it, while we, the residents, will be the ones who feel the cuts most deeply. Our members of Congress who voted “yes” for this bill are the ones responsible for this mess.
Letters and testimony are not enough. What we need is power. For regular people like us, there is but one path to power: organizing. That means we have to talk to those who will be most affected, inviting them to see their personal stake in this fight. The single parent in River Falls, juggling two part-time jobs and relying on SNAP to keep food on the table. The kid with asthma in Boyceville, whose parents rely on ACA coverage, now at risk of losing access to care. The retired farmer outside Balsam Lake, whose wife’s long-term care at Golden Age Manor nursing home is covered through Medicaid.
Our long game is to begin the conversation about what it will take for Congress to repeal the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The path to repeal will be fraught with political roadblocks and fiercely opposed by the corporate class, which has been true for every consequential victory working people have ever won in this country. Repealing the law must become a defining issue in every political conversation in America – at dinner tables, at bus stops, and on Reddit threads – starting now and continuing until the law is gone.
While showering billionaires with tax benefits, the OBBBA also massively expands the machinery of repression. It quadrupled the budget of ICE, expanding its force by 10,000 agents
Cracks are already beginning to form. Earlier this month, Rep. Van Orden, along with 17 other Republicans in the House of Representatives, backpedaled on his support of the OBBBA by voting to extend ACA tax credits (more than 30,000 people are expected to lose health insurance in Van Orden’s district). However, the opposition stiffens. Shortly after the vote, in a disciplinary move, Americans For Prosperity announced it was pausing support for those who defected.
Cutting services, expanding the machinery of repression
As I write, immigration agents are spilling into western Wisconsin from Minneapolis, swarming small towns and rural communities across the region. They are driving unmarked vehicles with out-of-state plates. Some members of our organization have built rapid response networks in solidarity with immigrant-led groups. Meanwhile, our neighbors are being terrorized, taken from their homes, and families are being ripped apart. Some local Mexican restaurants and grocery stores have closed their doors. Just sixty miles west, in Minneapolis, two American citizens have been killed by ICE agents.
This is not a coincidence. While showering billionaires with tax benefits, the OBBBA also massively expands the machinery of repression. It quadrupled the budget of ICE, expanding its force by 10,000 agents and thereby transforming the agency into one larger than most national militaries. On one hand, the administration subjects us to the cruel spectacle of paramilitary raids, disappearances and death. On the other, the administration dismantles the social safety nets that keep people alive, then redistributes public resources to the wealthiest few. A loud disruptive culture war creates a smokescreen for a quiet methodical class war.
The fight for Congress to repeal the OBBBA will be a David versus Goliath fight. It is a fight about whether the super-rich will be able to bleed us dry and starve our local institutions. Whether our neighbors will die as wealth is extracted from above. Whether daily life for a majority of Americans will be defined by relentless top-down class war.
This fight will not be won by politicians, consultants, or pollsters. It will be won by regular people who have decided to build a movement town by town, county by county, state by state. The ramifications of the OBBBA are so wide and deep that a new political coalition will be necessary, one big enough to include anyone who isn’t a billionaire. Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians, socialists, and people who’ve lost faith in politics altogether. White people, brown people, Black people, young people, old people. The poor, the working class, the middle class.
An unwavering commitment to big tent politics and multiracial solidarity is how we defeat the divide-and-conquer tactics this administration relies upon. Building trust and power across differences. Not reinforcing divides through purity tests or theoretical debate. Listening for common ground and shared humanity. Seeing every person as a potential ally, not an enemy to defeat. We must organize, strategize and mobilize until regular Americans have won the freedom to make ends meet, live with dignity, and have a voice in the decisions that affect us.
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