Perhaps no investment project in the U.S. has been more controversial in recent years than Foxconn’s construction of a manufacturing complex in Wisconsin. Between the multibillion-dollar tax breaks and Foxconn’s quick scaling-back of investment plans, critics have relentlessly blasted the deal as corporate welfare.
But for all its flaws, the project now appears to be playing a role in a very different story line that’s begun to emerge: Workers’ wages in that corner of Wisconsin, right along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, are climbing faster than in any other part of the country.
Two of the region’s metropolitan areas — Fond du Lac, just north of Milwaukee, and Racine, just south — rank first and fifth nationally in wage gains, with both posting increases of more than 25% in July from a year earlier. A third metropolitan area, Sheboygan, ranks 35th — out of a total of 389 in the U.S, according to data released last week.
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