A new Midwest Economic Policy Institute study finds the repeal of Wisconsin’s prevailing wage laws has resulted in lower wages for construction workers in Wisconsin, according to a report from Wisconsin Public Radio. Despite having no statistically significant impact on the cost of public construction projects, prevailing wage laws set minimum pay requirements for wages paid to workers on public construction projects such as school buildings or highway construction.
In 2015, former Gov. Scott Walker along with GOP lawmakers repealed Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law for local construction projects and in 2017, they repealed Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law for state construction projects. The new study used data from the U.S. Census Bureau and found that before the laws were repealed, the average annual income for full-time construction and extraction workers was close to $49,000. After the laws were repealed, the average annual income was a little over $46,000, a drop of more than 5%.
