Wisconsin's jobs market was great on Election Day 2024. Don't let people forget it.

Things were in a strong place in the Wisconsin jobs market ahead of the 2024 elections.

Preliminary employment estimates for October 2024 showed Wisconsin’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained at 2.9 percent, which is 1.2 percentage points below the national unemployment rate of 4.1 percent. In addition, the state’s labor force participation rate increased to 65.7 percent in October while the national rate ticked down to 62.6 percent.

Place of Residence Data: Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was 2.9 percent in October, 1.2 percentage points below the national rate of 4.1 percent. Wisconsin’s labor force increased by 8,400 over the month and 7,300 over the year. The number of people employed increased by 8,500 over the month and 23,900 over the year to a record-high 3,068,000 employed.

Place of Work Data: Total nonfarm jobs increased by 1,400 over the month and 27,400 over the year to 3,043,800 jobs.

It was the third straight month of private sector job growth in Wisconsin, and continues a steady, positive trend that we've seen since the effects of the Biden/Dem stimulus and inflation both started to wear off in early 2023.

Interestingly, while September's job totals went down by 2,400, private sector jobs went up by 1,300. That seems to be largely because state government jobs had its final normalization after being distorted over the previous three months due to starts of the UW System school year and (likely) Fall DNR jobs continuing through October 12. This means that even though seasonally-adjusted jobs may be no different than July, there have actually been nearly more 18,000 people working for Wisconsin state government agencies over those 3 months.

Much of that positive revision in private sector jobs came from 800 additional jobs in manufacturing, bringing September's gain to 2,600. It also means that Wisconsin has gained back the 7,300 manfuacturing jobs lost between September 2022 and September 2023.

On the household side of the survey, Wisconsin has the lowest amount of unemployed people and its lowest unemployment rate since May 2023, around the time that the Federal Reserve ended its tightening cycle, which raised the Federal Funds rates to a multi-decade high.

But an even better sign is the big (seasonally adjusted) jump in the number of Wisconsinites in the labor force, and the fact that those new entrants found jobs.

So let's remember how good the jobs market was in Wisconsin when Donald Trump was elected by enough Americans to return to the White House, and won the state by less than 1%. The Biden-Harris years were largely good ones here, especially after the rate of inflation leveled off in early 2023, and let's check back to see how things compare in November 2026 and in 2028 (assuming we can vote fairly here at that time).