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COWS Releases New Report on Low Wage Service Jobs in Milwaukee

Facts from the Frontline finds more than half of Milwaukee's Black and brown workers earn less than $15 per hour

Unions Down, Inequality Up

In the 20th century, workers and their unions transformed manufacturing jobs. What had once been dangerous and low-paying jobs became a source of economic opportunity for a diverse working class. Milwaukee’s manufacturing jobs with strong union representation created and sustained workers and the city.

Through decades of deindustrialization, Milwaukee’s union manufacturing jobs have been replaced by low-wage service jobs and the city’s racial socio-economic gap has soared. Milwaukee’s economic future, especially for Black and brown workers, lies in these service jobs. And as in manufacturing in the past century, workers are organizing to transform this work into the engine of economic opportunity and equity in Milwaukee.

Key Findings

Of the 242,000 workers who live in Milwaukee, over 40 percent earn less than $15 per hour. Black and brown workers are much more likely to hold these low-wage jobs. While roughly 30 percent of Milwaukee’s white workers hold very low-wage jobs, 51 percent of its Black workers and 56 percent of its Hispanic workers do.

These jobs have low wages and offer weak benefits. For the more than 100,000 Milwaukee workers paid under $15 per hour, only 47 percent have health insurance through their work. (For the city’s workers with better paying jobs, 80 percent get this benefit from their employer.)

Milwaukee’s low-wage jobs are concentrated in specific industries. Just three industries – Arts, Accommodation, and Food Service; Retail Trade; and Education, Health Care, and Social Assistance – account for more than 60 percent of the city’s low-wage jobs. In these industries and each occupation we analyzed, Black and brown workers are much more likely than their white peers to hold very low-wage jobs.

Milwaukee Workers Mobilize

Alongside the data, this report profiles Milwaukee service workers who are at the forefront of organizing efforts to improve the city’s low-wage jobs. Workers consistently point to the ways union representation is building stronger job quality and security in their work.

“Milwaukee’s service industries increasingly define and constrain economic opportunity for workers leaving too many of them in poverty, without health insurance, and struggling to support their children,” said Dresser. “Improving these now abundant service jobs is essential to securing a stronger and more equal Milwaukee.”

Facts from the Frontline, along with its companion reports Playing with Public Money in Milwaukee: Data, Context, and Questions on Soccer Stadiums and Worker Power Levels the Playing Field: Community Benefits for Public Subsidies in the Iron District, aim to bring greater public attention to the crisis in Milwaukee’s service jobs and the concrete public and private strategies that can improve them.

Read the Report

Facts from the Frontline is a product of the “EARN in the Midwest” project in Wisconsin, a collaborative of COWS, Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization (MASH), and Kids Forward.

About us.

Based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, COWS is a national think-and-do tank that promotes “high road” solutions to social problems. Learn more here, or click below to learn more about our projects housed at COWS:

COWS

1180 Observatory Dr Ste 7122

Madison, WI 53706-1320

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