More data shows Wisconsin job growth had largely flatlined by the middle of this year

I remember when Wisconsin media used to care a lot about the "gold standard" Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), when Scott Walker was trying to justify his policies as making Wisconsin "open for business." But strangely, the attention has dwindled over time as the state's job growth has slowed down over the last 4 years.

But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of things to chew on with each quarterly release, including the full data set that was released today for the June 2018 - June 2019 time period. We knew about the total jobs growth of 9,340 from a couple of weeks ago (I discussed that in this post), placing Wisconsin 41st in the US for its last year under a Scott Walker budget. But now we have more ways to break down the year-over-year totals.

First off, the state added a few more jobs in the private sector (10,202), and ranked a bit higher for private sector job growth (39th). But that still a tepid 0.40%, while the country as a whole added private sector jobs at a rate more than 3 times faster over the same time period (1.25%). Q2 also continued the downward trend in job growth for the state that has pretty much been the rule since early 2016.

Remarkably, that 0.40% rate of growth and 39th-place rankng in the US put Wisconsin 3rd out of 7 Midwest states for private sector job growth, with only Minnesota (+0.61%) and Indiana (+0.70%) doing better than us. So unlike much of the 2010s, we're not trailing much of our region, but our region is badly below the US rate of growth of 1.25%. Which sounds a whole lot like the 2000s before the Great Recession, which wasn't good for the Midwest even before the economy caved in.

If you go into Wisconsin's figures by county, this stat jumps out at you.

Private sector job change, June 2018- June 2019
Dane County +5,033
Rest of State +4,987

Total job change, June 2018 - June 2019
Dane County +6,595
Rest of State +2,745

That's right, Dane County added more than half the private sector jobs in Wisconsin over that 12-month period, and over 70% of the private sector jobs. And literally 1/2 of the 72 counties in Wisconsin LOST jobs between June 2018 and June 2019. Oh, but we're the crazy hippie moonbats in Madison while the outstate GOPs are the ones in touch with how to grow business in 2019. Riiiight.

There's a couple of other aspects to cover with this, but those topline numbers from the QCEW give a pretty clear picture of the two-tier nature of growth in America and in Wisconsin itself. The Midwest is stagnating while much of the rest of America is growing faster, and the Madison area is thriving while most of the rest of the state is struggling, if not outright declining.