When does 7.5% unemployment show improvement over 7.4%? In Walker World!

I've used previous posts to rip on DWD Secretary Reggie Newson and his silly spin jobs over the Walker Administration horrible record on jobs, but I understand it's part of the job. And you're failing like the Walker boys are on jobs, you sometimes need to reach really far to put a good face on things.

But this reached new levels yesterday, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the state-by-state averages for unemployment for 2011. Newson sent out a press release that included the following.

Wisconsin's annual average unemployment rate dropped a full percentage point to 7.5 percent from 8.5 percent in 2010, ranking us among the 10 states with the most dramatic decline in unemployment rates in 2011," Secretary Newson said. "In addition, Wisconsin's average unemployment rate ranking of 20th lowest represent a drop from 24th in 2010, and is the state's lowest ranking among the states and District of Columbia since 2000.

Today's report reaffirms that over the last year, when compared to other states, Wisconsin's employment rate has been heading in the right direction under Governor Walker's leadership.

This release is a classic case of trying to use statistics out of context to confuse the ignorant. Because the BLS's "average" unemployment rate uses the average of all 12 months a state had, it does not reflect where the state began or ended. So while Wisconsin's "average" unemployment was 8.5% in 2010, you have to remember that the state's unemployment was 9.2% in January, and ended at 7.5% in December. Not bad when you look at it like that.

In fact, when Walker took over in January 2011, unemployment had dropped to 7.4%. So using the BLS stats, I could argue that Wisconsin unemployment went UP in 2011 from a starting point of 7.4% in 2011 to an average of 7.5%, while national unemployment fell from a starting point of 9.0% to an average of 8.9%. And I'd probably be a lot more accurate in describing the bad performance of the last year in Fitzwalkerstan, wouldn't I?

That BLS report shows more behind the numbers, as the unemployment rate can also go down due to fewer people in the work force. So it can be useful to go to the Employment-Population ratio (EPR) to see if more people are truly working. EPR shows how many people are employed vs. the entire population, instead of just those working and looking for work. So people who have stopped looking for work, retired, went back to school, etc. are reflected in the EPR.

And when you look at EPR, Wisconsin trailed most of its neighbors, and actually had a lower percentage of people working under Walker than we had under Doyle.

2010-2011 Change in average EPR, Midwest
Minn +0.5%
Ind. +0.5%
Mich +0.3%
Ohio +0.2%
Wisc -0.1%
Ill. -0.2%
Iowa -0.4%

So as much as Reggie Newson in DWD may try to spin the BLS report, it only reiterates how well Wisconsin bounced back in 2010 under the Doyle/ Dem budget, and then stalled and went in reverse under the Walker/ WisGOP policies. And given the mass layoff stats for January and the large amount of local government cutbacks at the start of this year, don't count on it changing in the near future, even with the Obama Recovery going on in much of the rest of the country.