DWD released benchmarked employment in Wisconsin yesterday. Overall employment was higher in 2021 than earlier estimated, but the slowdown in now more pronounced.
Category Archives: employment
Employment in February
A Wisconsin Labor Shortage?
I talked briefly on WPR’s Here and Now yesterday, on the Wisconsin “labor shortage”. After making my obligatory comment that economists would not use the term “shortage” to characterize Wisconsin’s situation, as there were (and are) no barriers to private firms to raising wages and benefits (see this post). However, supply could be constrained — either because of the presence of benefits (e.g., enhanced pandemic-related unemployment insurance), accumulated savings from the previous pandemic rescue packages, perceived increased disutility of work, or fear of illness. But higher wages and more flexible working situations could mitigate the high ratio of job openings to employment.
Wisconsin Exports in a Post-Trump Trade War, Mid-Pandemic World
Despite the improvement in nominal exports ascribed to Wisconsin after Trump, real exports haven’t really recovered – and may not until global economic recovery. What does this mean for Wisconsin employment?
Wisconsin Employment, 1990-2021
Senator Ron Johnson has recently observed:
“It’s not like we don’t have enough jobs here in Wisconsin.”
Senator Ron Johnson and Bringing Jobs to Wisconsin
Senator Ron Johnson, on Foxconn, in 2018:
Data Paranoia Watch, Edition MMLXVI (seasonal adjustment)
A reader calls my attention to this article arguing that the large upside surprise in employment growth reported for January 2022 is due to seasonal adjustment. It takes 10 seconds to find the requisite not-seasonally-adjusted data on FRED, and another 10 seconds to load it into a decent software package as simple as Excel, and another 10 seconds (at most) to type in the command to take a 12 month log difference to see seasonal adjustment issues are not the reason for the big job growth number (there might very well be other reasons, but that ain’t it).
BLS Private Nonfarm Payroll Employment – ADP, Consensus, Revisions
BLS Private nonfarm payrolls up 444K vs. ADP down 301K vs. +150K consensus (Bloomberg), with big revisions to previous months. A lesson in not over-reading the ADP series (see employment situation release).
ADP Downside Surprise
Private nonfarm payrolls down 301K vs. +207K consensus (Bloomberg). Still, don’t over-read.
Wisconsin Employment in December
DWD released December figures today.