Two weeks after voting to strike and two days after Thanksgiving, members of Auto Workers (UAW) Local 833 are staffing picket lines round the clock near the Kohler plant in the Wisconsin village that bears its name. It’s 35 degrees outside and sunny—in fact, almost balmy compared to what it will be when the Wisconsin winter sets in. While hopeful that the strike won’t last that long, UAW members are nonetheless prepared to tough it out.

A new state-by-state analysis from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that Wisconsin experienced the biggest decline in middle-class households in the country between the years 2000 and 2013. Moreover, Wisconsin saw a 14% decline in median household income. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Marc Levine explains “that our economy relies on manufacturing perhaps more than any other state; when manufacturing gets hit hard, Wisconsin gets hit hard too,”

During the past several years, the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Center for Economic Development (CED) has produced a number of studies focusing on transit
service and access to jobs in the Milwaukee region. This study examines the impact of transit service cuts and service expansions that have occurred between 2001 and 2014 on access to jobs in the Milwaukee Metro area.