More Sconnies found work and jobs in 2024, and things were good as the year ended

It was a mixed picture in Wisconsin's last jobs report for 2024 and the Biden years, but things were overall still in good shape.

The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) today announced new record-high employment during December 2024, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This total, 3,076,500 employed, is the eighth consecutive monthly record for state employment.

Preliminary employment estimates for December 2024 showed Wisconsin's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate ticked up to 3.0%, which is 1.1 percentage points below the national unemployment rate of 4.1%. The state's labor force participation rate increased to 65.9% in December while the national rate stayed at 62.5%.

• Place of Residence Data: Wisconsin's unemployment rate was 3.0% in December, 1.1 percentage points below the national rate of 4.1%. Wisconsin's labor force increased by 5,000 over the month and 20,100 over the year. The number of people employed increased 2,500 over the month to a record-high 3,076,500 employed.

• Place of Work Data: Total nonfarm jobs decreased 1,200 over the month and increased 20,300 over the year to 3,042,100 jobs.

The record amount of "employed" in Wisconsin comes from the household survey, which has showed an impressive run up in both the number of Wisconsinites available for work in 2024 after some flatlining in the last half of 2023. It also shows that Joe Biden's term in office was especially good for workers in our state as we recovered from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also illustrates that the rise in unemployment from 2.9% to 3.0% was for the
"good reason", where a sizable number of the people who joined the Wisconsin work force in December 2024 got jobs, but not all of them. And the number of people unemployed in Wisconsin is basically the same as it was at the end of 2021, but the labor force and number of employed people has grown by nearly 72,000.

As for the loss in overall jobs? That's due to a seasonally-adjusted 4,500 lost jobs in local government for December, which likely reflects delays in colder-weather layoffs and a lack of need to hire for snow plowing and other Winter maintenance because of low snowfall totals. The private sector gained 3,300 jobs in December for its best gain since May, and resulted in a gain of a little over 16,000 private sector jobs for 2024.

No, it's not blowout figures and the job growth has slowed, just like it did in the nation as a whole in 2024. But it does put down a MacIvered talking point that WisGOP hacks recently tried that said most of Wisconsin's job growth was Soviet-style public sector positions and therefore not legitimate. UW-Madison's Menzie Chinn refuted that garbage in Econbrowser this week, and these new numbers make that MacIvered argument look even more foolish.

The low unemployment and continued job growth in Wisconsin in 2024 are likely to be a main reason behind what I bet are boosted revenue projections that should be released by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau some time in the next week. And yet, just enough voters in Wisconsin and nationwide thought that this situation wasn't good enough, and wanted to change parties in the White House and the policies that went with that?

Got a feeling we'll be looking back at where things were at the end of 2024 as something we'll wish we could get restored to by the end of 2025, and especially 2026. And we shouldn't let people forget what we had in Wisconsin before Donald Trump and the rest of the GOP took over in DC.