But let's not confuse that with giving credit to Walker/WisGOP policies, because the U.S. also had its lowest amount of unemployment claims since the time before the Great Recession. At least until the shutdown hit at the start of October. As this chart shows, Wisconsin's year-over-year decline in unemployment claims is no different than the rest of the country, as evidenced by the purple line creeping back above 0% the last 2 weeks.
Interestingly, the shutdown has kept the U.S's jobs report for September from being released, so it'll be slightly difficult to put the state's numbers into context. But if the Baggers in Congress don't screw things up even more tonight, the shutdown will officially be over, and we'll be able to run those reports soon enough once the feds get back online.
And... crickets.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing there might be some impact on that from the Federal shutdown, but I'd have expected at least an explanatory note to have been released today.
Bear in mind that Wisconsin is somewhat less dependent on Federal jobs than the nation as a whole, which could be a contributing factor to the climb of the line on your chart above 0%.
(28,000 out of 2,821,900 in Wisconsin, 1.0%, vs 2,739,000 out of 136,133,000 nationally, 2.0%).
Actually, DWD gave a quick note saying they were held up due to the shutdown, so that's why they're delayed. The US job numbers for Sept will be out on Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteMoving above 0% was actually showing that Wisconsin's reduction in unemployment claims was LESS than the US drop for the same week. As you mentioned, Wisconsin would probably go back below 0% for 2-3 weeks because it has fewer feds associated with the shutdown, and this week's numbers seemed to bear that out (it was a slight increase in Wisconsin, but a larger one in the US).