Pence also used the visit to try to give credit to a growing economy to President Trump, claiming that Wisconsin had added 36,000 jobs since Trump took office. Which is what Politifact decided to look into
The number of jobs in Wisconsin rose from 2.94 million in January 2017 — when Trump was sworn in — to 2.98 million in October 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a difference of 40,900.So, winning? Not really.
Those tallies show non-farm, seasonally adjusted jobs from the agency’s Current Employment Statistics — an estimate based on a monthly survey of a sampling of companies. But the gap is about the same using other breakdowns of the data….
Pence said 36,000 jobs have been created in Wisconsin since Trump took office.
It’s an oversimplification to imply, as Pence does, that Trump deserves the credit for that bump. Jobs have actually trended in the other direction so far this year -- and changes in either direction are the product of many factors, not just who occupies the Oval Office.
But Pence’s number lines ups with — and actually understates — the gains since January 2017, according to the latest data.
While it’s true that Wisconsin has gained jobs since Trump took office, there’s also no question that the rate of job growth in our state has slowed significantly since the start of 2017 . Take a look at what Wisconsin added in the 33 months before Trump took office vs the 33 months since then.
Job growth, Wisconsin monthly payrolls survey
April 2014-Jan 2017 +101,100
Jan 2017-Oct 2019 +40,900
#ThanksObama. It's dropped nearly 60% under Trump. Not really what those blue-collars thought they’d get when they gambled on the New York “businessman”, is it?
And we may not have even that much in reality, as the latest “gold standard” Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages came out on Thursday, and showed Wisconsin was doing especially bad compared to the rest of the country. The state was 41st in the US for total job growth over the 12 months from June 2018-June 2019, following an even-worse 46th place standing in March 2019 - the last 2 quarters the state was operating under budgets approved by Scott Walker and the WisGOP Legislature.
The QCEW says Wisconsin only added 9,340 jobs from June 2018-June 2019, and it continues a downward trend in the state's growth rate that started in 2016, and has dropped below 1% for almost all of the last year.
That being said, there was one positive sign for Wisconsin in the report, which Tony Evers’ Department of Workforce Development was glad to point out, while avoiding talk of the lagging jobs totals.
The United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) today released Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) data showing that Wisconsin ranks tied for 1st in the Midwest and tied for 7th nationally in Average Weekly Wage Growth from second quarter 2018 to second quarter 2019.So theoretically, those figures indicate that the low unemployment rate in Wisconsin and lack of available workers was finally pushing up wages in the first half of this year. The problem is that the state has had unemployment rise in every month since June 2019, so we’ll see if that has a limiting effect on pay hikes going forward.
The data released today also showed county level wage growth: Winnebago County had the 4th largest average weekly wage growth in the nation, 9.1 percent, while Dane County's growth of 6.3 percent ranked 8th nationally. Other counties with notable average weekly wage growth in Wisconsin include Milwaukee with a 4 percent growth rate, Outagamie with a 3.3 percent growth rate, and Waukesha with a 3.4 percent growth rate.
In addition to Wisconsin's poor showing in the QCEW, that report also tells us that the US as a whole wasn’t adding as many jobs as Trump’s Labor Department has been claiming. If you look at the national numbers in the QCEW over those 12 months, it’s a lot less than what the monthly jobs reports were saying.
Job growth, June 2018-June 2019
Monthly jobs report +1.51%
QCEW “gold standard” +1.13%
That means we will likely see job growth revised down somewhere in the neighborhood of 550,000-600,000 jobs when the Bureau of Labor Statistics does its annual benchmarking in 3 months. Wisconsin’s totals were also overestimated in the monthly reports vs the QCEW, although not as badly (the difference will likely be about 3,000 jobs).
But what that “gold standard” report does indicate is that if Mike Pence and Donald Trump try to use a “growing economy” as a reason they should be retained in 2020, it’s not going to resonate in states like Wisconsin. The numbers show that the decent (although still lagging) job growth that was going on in 2016 has gone way down since those Republicans took up residence in the White House, and how is that going to be any better a year from now?
"Kauffman's most recent analysis, released in 2017, places Wisconsin last among large states in startup activity for the third straight year. In fact, research suggests that the slow pace at which the state's economy recovered from the Great Recession can be at least partly explained by the low rate of new business activity."
ReplyDeleteAnd related to this trend:
"Barriers to education and training, as well as out-migration and other such factors can limit human capital and, by extension, entrepreneurship."
And:
"...Wisconsin has for decades lagged the nation in population growth. The low growth rate is a reflection of the state's aging demographic but also partially due to its migration patterns. Wisconsin's out-migration rate of working-age college graduates is one of the lowest in the U.S.; the state's in-migration rate is even lower. Taken together the low rates of people moving to and from the state suggest Wisconsin has some of the lowest rates of population churn in the United States."
"That is, states that have higher levels of population growth do indeed see higher levels of startup activity. This relationship is not surprising, as greater rates of population growth likely create greater demand for goods and services. These higher levels of demand in turn generate a greater response from entrepreneurs of many types. In Wisconsin, Madison stands out as a place with higher levels of in-migration and entrepreneurship."
Vice-President Dense is, of course, oblivious to these trends, and his oversimplification of job statistics is ideologically horse-blinded, in line with every other idiotic conceit he voices.
https://www.wiscontext.org/how-do-newcomers-wisconsin-influence-new-business-startups