Some data, as President Biden visits (CNN):

Macro indicators:

Figure 1: Wisconsin Nonfarm Payroll Employment (dark blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark measure of NFP (pink), Civilian Employment (tan), real wages and salaries linearly interpolated, deflated by national chained CPI (sky blue), GDP (red), coincident index (green), all in logs 2021M11=0. Source: BLS, BEA, Philadelphia Fed [1], [2], and author’s calculations.

Most indicators are moving upwards as of latest available data. Civilian employment is the only one trending sideways; however, this divergence has also occurred at the national level, and is likely mostly attributable to underestimates of the population.

The unemployment rate in Wisconsin is about 0.8 ppts below that nationwide.

Figure 2: Unemployment rate in Wisconsin (blue), in US (black), both in %. Source: BLS.

This is about the same percentage point difference that one finds on average, so one could infer that Wisconsin is about doing the same, cyclically speaking, as the nation overall.

Real wages are now higher than at the NBER peak at 2020M02.

Figure 3: Wisconsin average hourly earnings in $ (blue), in 2023$ (tan). Deflation using chained CPI. NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates for US shaded gray.

The deflation is implemented using chained CPI. The real wage is still higher than at NBER peak using the official CPI measure.

Finally, the CNN article notes the concerns regarding inflation. While we don’t have data for Wisconsin inflation, we do have that data for East North Central subregion, which encompasses Wisconsin.

Figure 4: Cumulative CPI increase since January 2021 in East North Central (blue), in US (black). East North Central seasonally adjusted by author using X-13. Calculations using logs. Source: BLS, and author’s calculations.

Cumulative inflation is about the same in East North Central as in the nation overall (although as noted elsewhere, East North Central food inflation relative to overall is slightly higher).

Finally, on a higher frequency note, the Baumeister, Leiva-Leon, and Sims Weekly Economic Conditions Indicator (ECI) indicates that for the week ending April 27, 2024, Wisconsin is growing 1 ppts faster than trend, while the US overall is growing 0.29 ppts slower than trend.