A solid December ends a good 2023 in Wisconsin's jobs market

It looks like Wisconsin’s job market ended 2023 in a strong position, finishing up with a decent December report.

Place of Residence Data: Wisconsin's unemployment rate held steady at 3.3% in December, remaining 0.4% lower than the national unemployment rate, which was 3.7% in December. The number of unemployed people increased 500 over the month for a total of 104,700 unemployed. The labor force gained 2,200 workers over the month and increased by 80,000 workers over the year for a total of 3,148,600 workers. The number of people employed also increased by 1,700 over the month for an annual increase of 67,200.

• Place of Work Data: Total nonfarm jobs increased by 4,800 over the month and 42,700 over the year to a record-high of 3,026,500 jobs in December. Private sector jobs increased by 1,700 over the month and 34,400 over the year. Healthcare and Social Assistance added 12,400 more jobs over the year. Construction jobs increased by 1,000 over the month and by 5,200 over the year.

We also saw November’s job gains get revised higher by 1,400, meaning that nearly 8,000 jobs were added in the last two months of 2023. The construction gains are especially noteworthy, as that continued 3 ½ years of steady post-pandemic growth in Wisconsin, with 2023 seeing nearly double the gains that 2021 and 2022 had.

Manufacturing also had a gain for December (500 jobs), and November’s totals were revised higher by 1,400. Those two months have stopped a consistent slide in manufacturing employment that had been going on for over a year.

I also note the increases in both employment and labor force, which was true for 2023 overall. But the labor force has kept going up over the last half of the year while the number of employed Wisconsinites hasn't moved much, which explains how the unemployment rate rose from a low of 2.4% in April and May to the 3.3% level it is at today.

Attracting more workers to the labor force is an ongoing concern in our lower-population growth state. But for both net migration and labor force entries, Wisconsin showed signs of improvement in meeting those challenges this year, and we need to keep working to continue that momentum for 2024.

If Wisconsin gets another year of 34,000+ additional private sector jobs and keep unemployment under 3.5% for 2024 with a growing labor force, as we did for 2023, I think a lot of us will be in a very good place this time next year. And that type of strong, steady job growth should be our central economic goal both as a state, and as a country.