Category Archives: Wisconsin

Jobs vs. Employment in the CES and CPS Employment Series

A reader asserts that Senator Johnson, in stating “It’s not like we don’t have enough jobs here in Wisconsin.” means that I should be reporting number of jobs, not number of people employed. However, in the previous post, I was exactly showing manufacturing and nonfarm payroll employment jobs (drawn from the Current Establishment Survey), which refer to the number of jobs, to wit:

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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.

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