Brad Hooper quit his previous job at a grocery in Madison because his boss was "a
little crazy". The manager threatened to sack him and other cashiers for refusing orders
to work longer than their agreed hours. Not long ago, Mr. Hooper's decision to walk out
might have looked foolhardy because he has no education beyond high school and suffers
from recurrent ill-health, including insomnia.
This time he struck lucky, finding much better work. Today he sells tobacco and
cigarettes in a chain store for 32 hours a week. This leaves plenty of time for his
passion, reading science fiction. His improving fortunes reflect recent gains for many
of America's lowest-paid. Handwritten"help wanted" signs adorn windows of many cafes and
shops in Madison. A few steps on from the cigarette shop is the city's job center, where
a manager with little else to do points to a screen that tallies 98,678 unfilled
vacancies across Wisconsin. In five years, he says, he has never seen such demand for
labor. He says some employers now recruit from a vocational training center for the
disabled. Others tour prisons, signing up inmates to work immediately on their release.
Unemployment in Wisconsin is below 3%, which is a record. Across America it was last
this low, at 3.6%, half a century ago. A tight labor market has been pushing up median pay
for some time. Official figures show average hourly earning rising by 3.2% on an annual
basis.
In any economic upturn the last group of workers to prosper are typically the poorest
earners, such as low-skilled shopstaff, food preparers, care-givers and temps. Their pay
was walloped in the Great Recession a decade ago, and the recovery since has been
unusually slow.
The benefits are not equally spread. In Wisconsin, as in much of the country, more
jobs are being created in urban areas and in services. Laura Dresser, a labor economist,
points to a"very big racial inequality among workers". Wages have been rising fastest for
African-Americans, but poorer blacks, especially those with felony conviction, are also
likelier to have fallen out of the formal labor market, so are not counted in unemployment
figures.