More Wis jobs data shows more keep coming back to work, no matter what WMC tries to tell you

Through all the budget action and as the GOP-run State Legislature passed a bill trying to take away the $300/week add-on for unemployment, we got another Wisconsin jobs report on Thursday. And it indicated a continuation of steady if not spectacular progress in bringing back the jobs lost in the COVID-induced recession.

The Department of Workforce Development (DWD) today released the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) preliminary employment estimates for the month of May 2021. The data shows that Wisconsin added 3,600 total non-farm and 3,400 private-sector jobs in the month of May. Wisconsin's unemployment rate in May was 3.9 percent, equaling April's rate of 3.9 percent.

It's a bit concerning to see us only add 3,600 in a month when the country had 559,000 additional jobs (we should be around 10,000 at that rate), but Wisconsin also gained 8,700 the month before as the US had a "disappointing" gain of 278,000, so no major concerns.

We're still up by nearly 44,000 jobs compared to November (when COVID was peaking at 50,000 cases a week in Wisconsin), which is a nice pace to be at.

And contrary to the WMC/WisGOP memes, more Wisconsinites continue to enter the work force in 2021, even with the enhanced unemployment benefits that began in December. In the household survey, over 31,000 more Sconnies are either working or looking for work in that time, and even more of them have said they have found jobs.

The numbers from May look even better when you realize that they're seasonally adjusted to account for Summer jobs and other warmer-weather effects. It shows that in raw numbers, someone's taking jobs. It just might not be at the levels to accomodate the jump in demand that's happening in industries that were depressed this time last year.

Non-seasonally adjusted figures, May 2021, Wisconsin
Payrolls
All jobs +29,500
Private jobs +35,000

Household survey
Labor Force +15,500
Employed +27,900

We also saw unemployment claims drop in Wisconsin throughout May and the first part of June, although there was a slight bump up in new claims last week as the school year ended in many places.

That doesn't mean all of our job market issues are solved in Wisconsin. We are still 137,500 jobs below our pre-COVID peak, with more than 53,000 of those being in the Leisure/Hospitality sector. And I think we're seeing some of those painful adjustments happening now, where businesses cut a lot of jobs (and some closed entirely), and now they're struggling to find people to get those jobs restored because many of their prior workers have (understandably) moved on over the last year.

But the problem isn't that people are sitting at home in Wisconsin and eating potato chips, no matter how much the mediocre businessMEN in WMC/WisGOP try to tell you.