Wisconsin jobs lose August's gains, but nothing to worry about, and finances look good

With Brewermania and an unusually warm October taking up more of my time than normal, I didn't pass along two big bits of Wisconsin data that came out in recent weeks.

The first was the Wisconsin jobs report for September. And I'll start my breakdown by noting that August had a sizable jobs gain, adding 11,500 jobs on a seasonally-adjusted basis. But the "seasonally-adjusted" part is important, as things fell back to earth as Summer ended in our state.

Nonfarm Jobs – The total nonfarm jobs in the state were 3,043,300, a decrease of 13,700 over last month.

Ooof. That erases the gains of August and adds another 2,200 in losses on top of that. At the same time, the state did report more private sector jobs in September than in July.

More than anything, this seems to indicate that more Wisconsinites held onto their jobs through mid-August, and more of those seasonal layoffs happened between mid-August and mid-September and not earlier.

Change in all jobs, Wis
August
Seasonally adjusted +11,500
Non-seasonal adjust. +6,400

September
Seasonally adjusted -13,700
Non-seasonal adjust. -29,600

Change in private sector jobs, Wis
August
Seasonally adjusted +6,000
Non-seasonal adjust. -900

September
Seasonally adjusted -4,600
Non-seasonal adjust. -42,500

In addition, September's unemployment rate in Wisconsin stayed at 3.1% for the second month in a row. Since I don't consider September's snapback in the jobs report to be a harbinger of any kind of future losses, I think this means the state's jobs market is staying in a low-growth, low-unemployment situation that's not unlike the rest of the country.

We also got our first look at the state's revenue picture for Fiscal Year 2027, after we got better-than-expected numbers for Fiscal Year 2026. And things seemed to be off to a good start, especially with a big quarter-end payment of corporate taxes.

Let me remind you that this big jump in corporate taxes at the state level is happening at the same time that corporate tax revenues have significantly declined at the federal level due to Trump/GOP Tax Scam 2.0. So that should give you an idea just how much is being grabbed by these companies with the new (mostly temporary) incentives in place, and it means Wisconsin's fiscal situation gets better because we haven't cut corporate taxes in recent years.

I'm also betting that excise tax number looks better for October after this Brewers run, although what's missing from this equation is the reality that costs are going up on the expenditure side, and that could cause tighter budgets as the Fiscal Year ends and the unbudgeted inflation kicks in. But at least through September, Wisconsin's jobs and fiscal situation was in good shape through September.