WISCONSIN’S RANKING FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
WISCONSIN’S RANKING FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
By Joyce Luedke
DO YOU KNOW?
June of 2015 in the latest Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation survey.
***The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship , respected around the world, focuses on education and small business start-ups. See page 10 for rankings and page 67 for Wisconsin’s profile.
*** Wisconsin’s job creation ranking in the nation fell from 31st in December, 2014, to 38th in March*** Wisconsin’s ranking for small business start-ups dropped from 45th in 2014 to 50th in, 2015.
*** Wisconsin lags the nation: 2.3% job creation in the US versus 1.16% for Wisconsin in 2014. Wisconsin trails all Midwestern states except for Iowa. Both states are tied for last place.
*** Low wage jobs in Wisconsin have grown the fastest since 2000, “with the growth accelerating since 2010.”
***Wisconsin saw a decrease in middle-wage occupations. “By 2013 , low-wage occupations made up 30.7% of the state’s employment.
***Middle-wage jobs had shrunk to 45.1%.” The study was done by UW-Milwaukee professor, Mark Levine, and is based on data from the federal Occupational Employment Statistics program.
*** Wisconsin’s middle class shrank faster than any other state in the US between 2000 and 2013 by nearly 10 percent. The median income of households in Wisconsin fell almost $9,000 during that same period—a drop of almost 15 percent.
***Recently passed legislation in Wisconsin will further erode the wages of the middle class.
***Right-to-Work-for-Less benefits the employers . Employees in RTWFL states earn about $1500 less per year than workers who work in states without RTWFL laws. The employees are less likely to have health insurance and the workplace is more dangerous.
***The prevailing wage law means Wisconsin expects to lose thousands of jobs across all sectors of the economy, millions of dollars in overall economic output and millions of dollars in tax revenue necessitating future cuts in vital public services.
***Analysis shows that “Project costs do not drop when the laws are repealed, but the quality of the work the public receives for its dollar does —and so does the economic security of people in the building trades, whether they work on public projects or private ones.”
See: An Economic Impact Analysis.
Clearly, the policies put in place by the party in control of all branches of government in Wisconsin do not benefit Wisconsin’s workers or their families. It is our responsibility to continue to contact our legislators and the governor and vote in 2016!