In an op-ed published yesterday, entitled “Wisconsin is working and growing jobs”, Governor Walker wrote:

More people are working in Wisconsin today than at just about any other time in our history.

This is correct. According to BLS statistics, in October Wisconsin civilian employment rose above March 2008 levels. They are still 13,855 below levels recorded in February of this year. This is why the Governor had to include the proviso “just about any other time”.

Figure 1: Wisconsin civilian employment, seasonally adjusted (blue), 2008M03 peak value (red horizontal line). Source: BLS.

As noted by Justin Wolfers, household surveys based estimates at the state level are subject to high levels of uncertainty. This doesn’t stop some people from citing state-level unemployment rates almost to the point of excluding other estimates. But it should — or at least make people a little reticent about unemployment-rate based boosterism, as we have heard from certain quarters.

For discussion of the trends in the establishment series, see here. To see how far Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment has lagged what should have been expected given historical correlations, see this post (hint: Wisconsin lags, and statistically significantly so).

This lackluster performance is likely why “…57 percent of voters said that they think Wisconsin is lagging other states in job creation”, according to a Marquette University Law School poll (WPR).