Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has dropped to 2.8 percentage points in April. The national rate is 3.9 percentage points. Proof of Walkernomics success? Well, since on average Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is typically 0.9 percentage points below, the answer is “no”. Consider the Wisconsin and US unemployment rates.
Figure 1: Unemployment rate for United States (blue), for Wisconsin (red). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray; Walker administrations shaded orange. Source: BLS, DWD, NBER.
State level data for GDP in 2017Q4 were released today. This is an opportunity to update the progress of manufacturing value added (as opposed to employment) in Wisconsin after passage of the Manufacturing and Agriculture Credit (MAC).
Reader PeakTrader says the fortunes of Minnesota and Wisconsin “began to diverge decade before Walker”. I don’t buy it.
Still not the leader of the pack.
Regarding the slowdown in employment growth in February, reader Neil asks:
To what extent could the weakness in February be a payback for the outsized growth in December and January. The three month average for nonfarm growth in Wisconsin looks solid. Also, do you have any thoughts on the average hourly earnings data? Looks like Wisconsin is seeing strong growth over the last year.
Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment for January revised down, flatlines for February.
Figure 1: Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment, February release (dark bold red), January release (red), December (pink), 000’s, s.a, on log scale. Light green shaded period denotes data benchmarked to QCEW data. Source: BLS.
Both Governors Brown and Walker are coming to the end of their second terms. Time to appraise how their respective economies have fared, in terms of employment.
New state level employment data, benchmarked through September 2017, released yesterday indicate the manufacturing employment surge reported last year has been erased, as I predicted in this post. The October-January data do not incorporate additional information from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
I was interviewed on the weekly newsmagazine Here and Now today about Mr. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum:
Regarding Wisconsin, cheese was not on the Hit List, but motorcycles and cranberries were.