"Gold standard" jobs report shows just how dead job market got in 2025

As I mentioned in the post on GDP and income/spending, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) had its latest update last week. This "gold standard" of jobs reports (so-called because it uses data from around 90% of private sector employers who account for around 95% of all US jobs) compared the totals from September 2025 with September 2024, and it showed that 25 of the 50 US states lost jobs in that time period.

And you can see Wisconsin is one of those 25 states that lost jobs in this time period, with a decline of more than 11,000 in this survey (a loss of 0.4%). That ranks us 40th in the nation, and 6th out of 7 in the Midwest (thanks Iowa!).

Not great, with big losses in sectors such as manufacturing (-7,577) and trade/transportation/utilities (-8,785). There also were nearly 1,100 jobs lost in Wisconsin in the sector with the highest wages - Information (generally IT Technology and related industries).

But the slumps in those sectors weren't only happening in our part of the country. 1 out 40 jobs in the Information sector nationwide were lost in this time period, and over 212,000 jobs went away in manufacturing. That continues the slide we've seen in the manufacturing sector for the last few years, and Trump's tariffs clearly have not turned that trend around.

There was one positive in that QCEW reort, as it showed solid growth in the average weekly wage (+4.7, or $66/week). That's a lot better than the 3.4% increase that happened between June 2024 and June 2025, and it led to significant upward revisions in employment-based income for the income and spending report.

But we also know prices kept rising to the tune of 3% or so in that time period, and that's with a sizable amount of places that had fewer jobs overall. And UW-Madison's Menzie Chinn says the bad QCEW numbers mean the already-lame jobs growth numbers for 2025 might end up being even worse when we see benchmark revisions this Summer.