New "gold standard report" runs Wis's subpar jobs streak to 29.

The latest edition of the “gold standard” Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages gave its first look at jobs and wages on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Because it only includes the topline figures for states and the largest counties, it didn’t get a lot of notice in the media, but even this smaller bit of data showed that Wisconsin continued to trail the nation as our 7th year as a right-wing lab experiment continued in mid-2018.

While we don’t have the full breakdown between various sectors of the economy and the rural areas, we still can get a good idea about where Wisconsin and its largest metro areas stood in total job and wage growth. In the June 2017 to June 2018 time period that the recent QCEW covers, Wisconsin extended its streak to 29...consecutive quarters in the bottom half of job growth. This time we were 33rd with an increase of 0.86% - well below the US’s total job growth of 1.52%.

Granted, it’s not all awful news, as the state was 3rd out of 7 in the Midwest for those 12 months, a rare top-half showing in that statistic. However, that underscores how much of the region is struggling in the Age of Trump while much of the rest of the nation continues to chug along.

Midwest job growth, all jobs, June 2017-June 2018
Mich +1.35%
Ind. +1.13%
Wis. +0.86%
Ill. +0.78%
Minn +0.764%
Iowa +0.763%
Ohio +0.68%

Those figures are even more disconcerting when you realize June 2018 was before crop prices plunged further and yesterday’s news of GM closing auto plants in Michigan and Ohio.

Stretching it out over the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, Wisconsin looks even worse. We slip to 5th in the Midwest for the 7 years since Scott Walker’s first budget was passed in June 2011, with Wisconsin’s job growth being less than 2/3 the US rate over the same time period.

Wage growth is similarly bad for Wisconsin over the last 7 years. Wisconsin is also 5th in this statistic with a growth rate in the average weekly wage below 17.9% over the last 7 years (before inflation), which is also less than the 18.4% wage growth in the US.

Comparing these two years also shows that Wisconsin workers still make lower wages than most of our neighbors, and that this gap grew between us and states like Minnesota and Illinois, as well as the rest of the country.

Average weekly wage, June 2011 vs June 2018

Not that this is surprising, but that whole “open for business” trickle-down mentality that WisGOP foisted on us? Yeah, it hasn’t quite worked out when it comes to increasing jobs or wages in Wisconsin. In fact, it’s quite clear that GOP rule has held us back held us back.

If the gerrymandered GOP Legislature thinks that they can keep doubling down on these failing strategies, they’re going to be following Scott Walker's path in another way - in getting kicked out of the door of the Capitol as the US economy worsens and their gerrymandering goes away over the next 4 years.