Wisconsin’s Governor Walker Touts Alternate Employment Series

Makes little impact on trend relative to promise, and relative to the Nation

Governor Walker’s administration has in the past criticized the BLS series for state nonfarm employment, and has relied upon the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) series (which lags in reporting by several months). The QCEW is more accurate, as it’s a census (rather than a survey-based estimate in the NFP series). In the past, benchmark revisions of the BLS series have pushed up the BLS series. [0] Today, Governor Walker again touted the QCEW numbers. [1] However, it appears that there will be only a small revision to the BLS series once they are benchmarked to the QCEW.
laggingstill0.png

Figure 1: BLS August release for private nonfarm payrolls (blue), fitted values for 2013M01-M03, using a log-log regression over 2001M01-2013M03 period (red), extrapolated values (adding the changes in the BLS series to the fitted value for 2013M03) (green), Wisconsin July 2013 Economic Outlook forecast, interpolated from annual data using quadratic match average (pink), and the trendline consistent with Governor Walker’s promise to create 250,000 new jobs (gray). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS (establishment survey), BLS (QCEW), Wisconsin Economic Outlook (July 2013), NBER, and author’s calculations.

Technical Notes: I downloaded the QCEW private employment series, logged it, and seasonally adjusted using ARIMA X-12 (arithmetic), over the available sample (2001M01-2013M03). I regressed the log private WI nonfarm payroll employment series on this seasonally adjusted QCEW series to obtain the 2013M01-M03 fitted values. I then took the anti-log of the predicted series to obtain the estimates in levels. For the extrapolated values, I added the actual log changes in the BLS series and added to the fitted value for 2013M03 (in levels).

In sum: Wisconsin private employment growth continues to lag the Nation’s, as well as Minnesota’s, since 2011M01, despite any revisions likely to come from the newly release QCEW. [2]

7 thoughts on “Wisconsin’s Governor Walker Touts Alternate Employment Series

  1. samuel

    “One day after a federal report showed that Wisconsin is creating jobs at a pace that’s about half the national rate, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said the uncertainty of last year’s special gubernatorial recall election stunted hiring in the state.”
    http://www.jsonline.com/business/walker-attributes-slow-job-growth-to-uncertainty-created-by-recall-election-b99108118z1-225525772.html
    What on earth is the basis for making this claim?
    Terrible.
    Walker’s failed policies will plague Wisconsin for years to come.

  2. Gov. Walker Away From the Responsibility

    “What on earth is the basis for making this claim?”
    Basis? what are you talking about. We make these things up as we go. The sheeple that vote for us prefer a simple lie to a complicated truth. So we just promise whatever will get us elected and then blame our opponents when those promises do not come through. If something good happens its because of us – something bad its because of that other tribe.

  3. XO

    I think the graph would better match the text if it also included the US and MN lines. Anyway, I like this series of posts, and I think Walker’s WI policies makes a pretty good test case for austerity. Hard to argue that these policies have helped WI, but also maybe not as bad as some suggested.

  4. Kevin O'Neill

    “Citing the way states in close proximity to each other have spun off in starkly different policy directions, Walker compared GOP-controlled Virginia to Democratic-controlled Maryland, and GOP-controlled Wisconsin to Democratic-controlled Minnesota and Illinois.
    Walker says, “People in a year or two will get a pretty clear comparison” between the vastly different governance in Minnesota and Wisconsin, two states with otherwise similar political makeups and cultures.”
    http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/218243481.html

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