Good morning.
Friday will be partly cloudy with a possibility of afternoon showers and a high of 88. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset 8:37 for 15h 20m 19s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1944, Camp Janesville was established when 250 German POWs arrived in Rock County to help pick and can peas, tomatoes, and sweet corn. The camp was a small town of tents that housed guards and the POWs, many of them from the defeated Afrika Corps led by the “Desert Fox”, Field Marshall Rommel. Another 150 prisoners were assigned to a similar camp in Jefferson. The German POWs were primarily in their mid-20s. They were eventually transferred to an undisclosed camp on September 25, 1944.
On this day in 1945, the Battle of Okinawa ends when the organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island.
Wisconsin workers’ average pay — an average — increased significantly over the last year. David Clarey reports Wisconsin workers’ average pay jumps 5.3% from last year:
Wisconsin workers’ pay rose over 5% from a year ago at this time, slightly outpacing the national average, according to a new report.
The June 5 report from payroll company ADP shows that the median annual pay in Wisconsin in May reached $59,000, up 5.3% from a year ago. That slightly beat out the nationwide median pay of $58,300 and 5% increases.
ADP’s report uses salary data from about 10 million employees over a 12-month period to calculate the data, it said in a media release.
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ADP’s figures are slightly higher than what USA TODAY reported in February. That report showed that the average annual salary in Wisconsin was $58,552.
The United States Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported its official statistics for May 2023 in April 2024. At that time, it said the annual average wage was $59,500 out of 2,885,990 workers in Wisconsin. Nationally, the annual average wage was $65,470.
These reported wage increases are averages, and ADP’s method is a private assessment. Even within Wisconsin, there are sure to be significant variations in employment levels and salary gains. Nonetheless, gains in individual and household incomes are a foundational measure of community prosperity. The measure of an advanced, productive market economy is whether it advances personal and household well-being across all parts of a community. In this regard, the goal should be the broader the gains, the better.
Some of us in Whitewater have done well over the last generation, but some of us is an inadequate achievement. How odd that, despite having lived long in this city, a few of us don’t seem to grasp this fundamental economic goal (and moral principle).
Wildfires rage in California and New Mexico: