The State of Working Wisconsin — 1998, provides a comprehensive view of the economic status of Wisconsin workers.

The study relies on a variety of data on wages, industry, family income, wealth, and poverty, comparing Wisconsin's performance to its own past as well as to the nation.

Since the last State of Working Wisconsin Report in 1996, some things have improved for working families in the state, the study found. Per-capita income growth out-paces the nation; unemployment falls well below the national rate; and median wages and family income are up. However, bad news overshadows the good.

Today, the Wisconsin median hourly wage ($10.63) is still 8.4 percent below its 1979 level ($11.61). Between 1989-97, the long economic expansion, Wisconsin median wages grew a mere 28 cents per hour — on average, less than a nickel per year.

From 1979-97, Wisconsin's median wage declined 50 percent faster than the 5.3 percent national decline over the same period.

Increases in family income since the late 1970s are due entirely to increases in hours worked — a strategy that cannot be indefinitely sustained.

Family incomes are up, but given falling men's wages and stagnate women's wages, this is simply the result of increasing hours devoted to work. Nationally, from 1979-96, the average married couple with children increased its annual hours worked by 19 percent — to about 3,850 hours per year.

The typical Wisconsin married couple increased their working hours even more. The result of that massive increase in work resulted in a 9 percent family income gain nationally, but just a 6 percent increase for a family of four in Wisconsin.

From 1979-97, the share of Wisconsin's full-time workers who earned extremely low wages jumped by more than a third, from 14.9 percent to 20.3 percent. This outpaced the national increase in poverty-wage jobs over the period.

Working hard for a living is not enough to keep Wisconsin families out of poverty. Since the late 1970s, the share of working families who are poor has increased by more than 70 percent, far out-pacing increases nationally.

At present, more than half a million Wisconsinites live in poverty, up from less than 400,000 two decades ago. And since the late 1970s, the poverty rate among Wisconsin children has increased 50 percent, from 10.4 percent to 15.1 percent.

Income inequality in Wisconsin is growing.

Wisconsin's tax system compounds inequality, imposing twice the tax rate on the bottom 20 percent of families (13.6 percent) as it does on the top 1 percent (6.4 percent).