Madison - WMC, the state's chamber of commerce, Thursday issued a statement rebutting a faulty manufacturing wage study from Wisconsin Citizen Action that claimed wages are declining.

WMC Senior Vice President Scott Manley said the following:

"The Citizen Action study is flawed on multiple levels. They have cherry-picked data from a universe of 314,700 workers and have attempted to represent it as reflective of Wisconsin's manufacturing sector. In reality, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show Wisconsin has 474,000 manufacturing jobs as of June of this year. Their data excludes more than 159,000 high-earning manufacturing jobs from their analysis. That's one-third of manufacturing wages that they chose to exclude from their study.

"The reality is that Wisconsin manufacturing paid average annual compensation of $67,833 in 2014, which is 45% higher than the state average. These are well-paying, family-supporting jobs for many middle class Wisconsin families, and it's unfortunate that this group is attempting to misrepresent the data in order to advance their liberal agenda. If Citizen Action is concerned about the rate of growth in manufacturing wages, we would welcome the opportunity to work with them to undo the estimated $1 trillion in new regulatory costs imposed on businesses by President Obama's administration - costs which are depressing wages, depressing hiring, and leading to less economic opportunity for families at every income level."