Russ op-ed: Wisconsin is in an economic slide, and recent policies are to blame


Management Prof. Meir Russ, the senior faculty member in the Austin E. Cofrin School of Business, contributed a guest column earlier this week to the Green Bay Press-Gazette opinion page. Russ uses numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to document that while the average annual wage in Wisconsin has risen from $40,190 in 2009 to $42,880 in 2014, the state has slipped from about 7.5 percent below the national average to 9.2 percent below. Wisconsinites at all income levels are falling further behind, Russ writes. “This would suggest that high-paying jobs are leaving Wisconsin either through attrition (retirement or downsizing) or migration, and are replaced by low-paying jobs. Add to that the fact that Wisconsin ranks highest in the nation on losing the middle class and 38th in new jobs creation; the picture is not pretty.” Russ puts the blame solely on disinvestment in public education.