BizOpinion: Rebuilding the middle class: Ex-Wisconsin congressman offers a plan

This is an excerpt from a Tom Still column posted at BizOpinion.

A report released this month by the Brookings Institution confirmed what many observers already suspected: Metro Milwaukee lost almost twice as many private-sector jobs in the decade of 2000-10 as the average for the nation’s 100 largest metro areas.

Not only was metro Milwaukee’s 6.8 percent job loss well above the national average of 3.9 percent, but many of the vanished jobs were good jobs — with decent wages, benefits and some sense of security and opportunity.

In short, they were middle-class jobs that appear increasingly difficult to replace in today’s jobless recovery.

Rebuilding the endangered middle class in America is the subject of “The New Middle Class: Creating Wealth, Wages, and Opportunity in the 21st Century,” written by former Wisconsin congressman Steve Gunderson, who is now president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities.

The book provides an unvarnished look at why the American middle class has eroded over time, beginning with events, trends and policies dating to the 1970s, and offers some paths forward – assuming there is sufficient private and public will to follow them.

Read the full column