In comments on my post on the July Employment Release, reader Bruce Hall (August 3, 12:50PM) writes:
But, oddly, [Wisconsin] education and government employment increased in Wisconsin by more than 13,000 during the Jan-Jun period under uber-neo-con-anti-government Gov. Walker.
The BLS has released preliminary estimates for June employment in Wisconsin. Private payrolls declined 11.7 thousand while total nonfarm payroll declined 13.2 thousand (0.5% and 0.5% respectively, using log differences), at seasonally adjusted rates. Civilian employment decreased 7.9 thousand (0.3%). (At annualized rates, these would be 6%, 5.8% and 3.3%, respectively). It is interesting to observe that none of these figures are cited in the text of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development press release. Instead, it notes:
The Spring Wisconsin Economic Outlook has not yet been released (last year, I believe it was released in early/mid May), so I thought I’d take a look at what recent private sector forecasts indicated. Here is one graph of relative GDP trends from Chase’s State of the Wisconsin Economy, dated March 31.
TPM average of polls for Wisconsin governor recall, Barrett vs. Walker: 48.5 to 49.7.
Unsurprising to me, but still of note.
From ProPublica, insight into Wisconsin (among other states):
States have diverted $974 million from this year’s landmark mortgage settlement to pay down budget deficits or fund programs unrelated to the foreclosure crisis, according to a ProPublica analysis. That’s nearly forty percent of the $2.5 billion in penalties paid to the states under the agreement.
Updated 5/27 — added Figure 2 showing Wisconsin’s poor performance vis a vis US as measured by coincident indices.
Governor Walker has been touting on numerous (!) radio and television ads employment gains using the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) based figures [0], and (apparently) adding on reported changes in employment, as recorded by BLS. I wanted to highlight exactly how lackluster the record looks even with Governor Walker’s preferred numbers.
Official figures indicate employment declines in April, according to the BLS. Private payrolls are 4700 below January 2011 Levels
(Updated at 5/17 12 noon Pacific: Wisconsin DWD reports April Loss of 5.9K NFP Jobs (6.2K Private); March NFP numbers revised up 7.3K, private payroll numbers revised up 0.7K. Total civilian employment rises by 6.8K according to household survey. Complete information at bottom of post).
Today, the Wisconsin DWD took the unusual — one might say unprecedented [1] [2] — step of announcing their estimates of what they call “actual job numbers” (see press release here). These are based on the unemployment insurance covered employment. From the press release:
From Milwaukee Journal Sentinel All Politics Blog:
Gov. Scott Walker recommitted Saturday to his pledge to create 250,000 private-sector jobs by 2015, a promise all the more difficult to achieve since he first made it because of anemic job growth during his tenure.
From Milwaukee Sentinel Journal:
A filmmaker released a video Thursday that shows Gov. Scott Walker saying he would use “divide and conquer” as a strategy against unions.