employment

Many of Wisconsin's 23,000 prison inmates will eventually be released. A new program tries to get more ready for the world of work, including training some women at Taycheedah Correctional Institution to be welders.

The women's prison near Fond du Lac also has a new state-staffed job center, which helps inmates search for work. The Evers administration says similar job centers are coming to two Milwaukee-area correctional facilities by the end of 2019.

Only four out of 10 working-aged adults with disabilities are employed nationally, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution. 

What do you want to be when you grow up? Gender might determine what images come to kids’ minds.

So many fields are dominated by one gender or another that Wisconsin has a name for this trend: “non-traditional occupations.” Those are fields that employ 25 percent or less of one gender. The state keeps track, and publishes a list every few years.

Leaders at schools like MATC say it’s their mission to shorten that list.

In Wisconsin, the gender wage gap is 22 cents per dollar, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. This adds up. American women are losing up to $1.5 million over the course of their lifetimes. A program at UWM is hoping to make wages more equal by teaching future graduates how to negotiate with employers.

Update, Nov. 23: Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel is praising a federal court in Texas for issuing a nationwide preliminary injunction to halt the Dept. of Labor's Overtime Rule. Schimel, representing Wisconsin, had joined 20 other states in asking the court to put the rule on hold. "There’s no greater honor than representing millions of Wisconsinites in the continuous fight for the return of power to our citizens, away from an out-of-control federal bureaucracy in Washington D.C.

After unrest rocked Milwaukee in August - following the police killing of a black man, Gov. Walker promised to send mobile job banks to distressed city neighborhoods. Many are plagued by joblessness and crime.

On Tuesday, the first traveling unit arrived. It set up a bank of computers on 27th and North, inside the Dept. of Workforce Development. Several dozen people came in to take advantage of the services.

Jerry Grover sat in a corner of the Hire Center, searching for jobs on a laptop.

When Governor Walker last week announced the state would spend more than $4 million to spur workforce development on the north side, he said some of the money will pay for mobile response job centers to set up in zip codes where unemployment is high and access to resources is limited. 

Could jobs be headed to Milwaukee's north side? A local businessman is hopeful, and he’s talking with others.

Tim Sullivan used to lead South Milwaukee giant Bucyrus, a mining manufacturer. Now he's CEO of REV Group, a firm headquartered in Milwaukee, which makes ambulances, buses, street sweepers and a range of other vehicles.

REV Group has bid on a contract with the United States Postal Service to build vans.

Sullivan says the city's north side would be the perfect place to do the work because of the area's huge labor pool.

Elected officials and community activists gathered in Milwaukee on Tuesday to criticize Gov. Walker’s job creation agency. They insist it has not done enough to fuel economic development in the Sherman Park neighborhood. 

Violence broke out there this month, after an officer fatally shot a man who police say was armed and fleeing a traffic stop. But, activists did not limit their criticism to just the state.