Thursday, November 17, 2022

Job growth takes a breather in Wisconsin in October

Got a new Wisconsin jobs report for October, and it wasn't so great.
Place of Residence Data: Wisconsin's labor force participation rate declined to 65.3% in October from 65.6% in September, but was still 3.1 percentage points higher than the national rate of 62.2%. Wisconsin's unemployment rate in October was 3.3 percent, 0.4% below the national rate of 3.7%.

• Place of Work Data: Over the year, Wisconsin added 58,800 total nonfarm jobs and 54,600 private sector jobs. From September to October 2022, Wisconsin private sector jobs decreased by 1,600 and total nonfarm jobs declined by 2,200.
Notice how the loss of jobs in October was buried at the end of that? Not great in a month when the country as a whole added 261,000. But after Wisconsin added a (revised) 11,000 private sector jobs in September, I suppose we would expect some reversion to the norm.

But the divergence between the household survey (that determines the unemployment part of the report) and the payrolls survey (which is the “jobs change” part) continued in October in Wisconsin, and there is a major difference between the two since May.

Given that new weekly unemployment claims are still running 2,000-3,000 below the same time the year before, and total unemployment claims being just above half of the levels of October 2021, I’m inclined to buy the payroll increase over the drop in “employed” Wisconsinites. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aware that we could be a “maxed out” state with low population growth, and do policy with that in mind.

I’ll note that Wisconsin’s goods producers kept hiring in October, with the construction and manufacturing sectors each adding 1,800 jobs last month. And professional/science/technical services went up by 2,400, and 11,600 jobs since October 2021. Those are well-paying jobs and a good sign for the state’s economy.

But the big loser in this jobs report gives a red flag beyond just one bad month. Health care/social assistance shed 4,200 jobs in Wisconsin in October, in a month when the US added more than 71,000 jobs in the same areas. We’re also down 1,200 jobs in that sector in the last year, and it’s something we likely should look more into, given the caregiver and nursing shortages that we frequently hear about in our local news sources.

This is the challenge that I see in general for the next state budget and our state's future economy in general. We seem to be leveling off on what we can do, after strong job growth of the last 2 years. Now we need to find ways to get people to want to come here, and I would hope that the prospect of 4 more years of Tony Evers in office would have regressive WisGOPs back off of some of the stupid garbage that repels people from wanting to relocate (or stay in) Wisconsin.

I'm not expecting that, mind you. But it would be a wise thing to do if we want to improve on what are already good times in Wisconsin, and improve our economic capacity.

2 comments:

  1. It would be helpful to see a graph or employment numbers from the other surrounding states to compare what is going on throughout the region. It is confusing to see the different job numbers between MN and WI appearing to have little in common. Why would WI report job losses for October down around 2000 jobs while MN reports gains of 17,400? Why is the participation rate so different in WI of 65.3 vs 68.0 and the unemployment rate of 3.3 vs 2.1%? None of these numbers seem very close. The election results between both states didn't seem similar either, with the GOP gaining seats in WI (close to veto override levels) while Dems gained seats in MN (even picking up the state senate). None of these details seem likely in states that exist side by side. In past decades, the numbers seemed more consistent between states, so what has caused the extreme differences now?

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    1. The election results are an easy thing to explain between the two states. Minnesota has fair legislative maps, and Wisconsin has arguably the worst gerrymander in America.

      As for the different economic outcomes? I will say that Minnesota had a bigger hole than us because they adhered to COVID restrictions longer, so that's some of the year-over-year gap to make up for it. But Minn has also beaten us badly ever since Scott Walker and the GOP took over state government in 2010, and I fear that gap will persist and get worse now that Dems run the show in Minny and will invest accordingly while our schools and local governments can barely make ends meet.

      You'd think the WMC types would learn from the job gains and attractiveness of the Twin Cities and Madison and want to spread those advantages to other parts of the state. But they do the exact opposite.

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