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Good afternoon, everyone.
And thank you so much for joining us on behalf of the department of
Workforce development.
I'm Jennifer Sorino, assistant deputy secretary.
And we are thrilled to have our monthly statewide labor market
Briefing with our DWD chief economist, Dennis Winters.
Now we just released our monthly press release just a few moments ago.
And for those of you who are paying close attention, you may
Notice that that is our second statewide numbers that we've
Released this month.
That is due to the benchmarking process, which occurs as various
Statistics are taken into account at the federal level.
And some revisions come out.
So during the month of March, we have two of these statewide
Labor market briefings.
This is the one for February's numbers.
And we have another great month of statistics and stories to tell.
And with that, I'll let Dennis Winters take it away.
Dennis, are you able to share some top lines with us?
Hi, Ken, Jenny.
Thank you.
So let's remember this is February data.
We're looking at again here in Wisconsin set new records.
Again, for total non-farm jobs in February.
So if we look at the slide, the current employment statistics
Survey on total non-farm jobs, the wavy line is non-seasonally
Adjusted series.
The other line is what we call the seasonally adjusted series.
And anytime you see the gray bars in these graphs, that
Designates recessions.
So you can see here we had the great recession and then COVID
Recession there.
So total seasonally adjusted jobs now.
30,900, which is a new record.
As you can see in the blue line there going forward.
And that continues to increase.
We've had a pretty good run here as the economy grows.
We're adding jobs.
So totally seasonally adjusted jobs are up 3200 for the month
and 22,400 year over year.
Private sector jobs were up over the month.
Also, I'm looking at that at 15,700 year over year.
Construction sector jobs were off a little bit this month.
They've been on a hot streak setting record after record on a
seasonally adjusted basis because of the activity that's going
on, particularly in the heavy construction and in multifamily
housing.
Manufacturing jobs were up 800 over the month.
They're down some 1100 year over year.
So if we look at the historical representation of the
unemployment rate, we see the unemployment rate dropped again
down to 3.0% for Wisconsin.
On the other hand, it increased to 3.9% for the U.S.
And that's, they're both running there at fairly low levels as
we can see historically.
So the next slide shows a number of Wisconsin's unemployed.
Again, we can see that they are running there at essentially
historic lows that we've seen for quite some time.
Now, other than the COVID recession, we're looking since
essentially 17 on because people are able to find jobs and
keep jobs.
So those numbers are down decreased 4800 to 95,600.
That numbers 14,400 above year ago levels.
But as you can see, year ago level was a historic low.
So those trends are down and are keeping at those very low levels.
So the next slide shows Wisconsin's a labor force and
the number of employed.
You can see here those seasonally adjusted labor force
decreased 4900 and the employed decreased 100 for the month.
Those are essentially little wobbles in the trends we've
seen going across here with the flattening workforce for some
time.
But the increases that we've seen in employment going across and
Wisconsin's labor force participation rate fell to 65.
0.7%.
Based pretty much just on the arithmetic in these numbers,
but that's 3%, 3.2 percentage points above the US number.
That is 62.5%.
So we're moving on here on the unemployment insurance claims.
You can see the green line here.
We're tracking again at historic lows, which has been the case
over the last couple of years.
So we aren't seeing very many people being laid off relative.
Businesses are still looking for jobs and that will continue to
be the case as we see going forward.
If we go to the next slide, we can see the unemployed continued
unemployment claims and there again running within the
pretty tight ban there, which has been historic lows over the
last few years.
So if you happen to be laid off from your position,
it's pretty likely you're going to find another job in short order.
We don't expect that to be changing at all going forward either.
So yeah, Jenny, then coming, you know, this is our,
this is our labor force quantity challenge and we've seen,
we've extended this out to 2040 now.
And you can see the blue line is Wisconsin's workforce and it's
essentially flat, but it's close to zero as you can be.
Even if you're rounding numbers, it would probably go to zero.
So that's flat.
That's, we know this has been going to be coming, right?
We've talked about it a lot in the past.
And the big item here is that it's not going away anytime soon,
which will tend to continue to give us.
I suspect, you know, low unemployment rates, high job counts,
low unemployment insurance claims, et cetera, as we go forward.
Just as the baby boomers continue to age out of the workforce,
some are saying a $10,000 or $10,000, 10,000 employees a day
or people are aging out.
So that's the quantity challenge we have going forward.
So all in all, yeah, I mean, summing up our unemployment rate is
down and our jobs numbers are up.
So that's a pretty good spot to be in any economy.
Yeah, thank you very much, Dennis.
And we'll invite those who are on the call.
We want to thank everyone for joining us.
And we'd invite you to send through your questions using the chat.
And to kick it off, Dennis, you know, there's a couple of factors
that play here in terms of that, that high employment number,
that high employment number that we saw last month, again,
were, you know, very close to that record, high number of people employed.
And, you know, to what extent do you think that's being influenced
by these efforts to train people, to introduce new skills,
to build awareness, just of all of the great opportunities
that are out there for people to, to, you know, work and participate,
you know, participate with, with so many of our great employers in Wisconsin.
You know, what, what do you see going forward with that?
Well, I think that's all positive news.
You're as familiar with anybody as the programs we've got, right?
That we spend a lot of time and resources to match the skill sets
of workers with the skill sets that are demanded by employers.
And that, and we continue to do that.
That money is paying off, that training is paying off.
Businesses tell us that while they are still having trouble finding people,
you know, they're looking to get those people trained up and matched
and what they need to do going forward.
That's kind of part and parcel in, in what it means with, you know,
productivity increases and technological advance.
And as we grow the economy, we, we have to do that.
You know, I sense essentially back to the formation of the wheel, right?
That technology that goes forward and we've got to, we've got to stay up
with the technology and, and we continue to do that.
And we've got a question regarding the, the benchmarking process that I mentioned
earlier, again, for those of you who are just joining us, you know,
we do each year go through a benchmarking process.
We're at the federal level.
The statistics are essentially marked based on a whole, whole variety of other
incoming data.
Sometimes there are adjustments made, not typically too significant,
but on the other hand, you know, we, we do take notice of them.
And so we do have a question about whether there were any substantial changes
from the benchmarking process this year.
Is there, is there anything that we also need to keep in mind going forward
when looking back at the data from last year?
Well, well, on the whole, yeah, we expect this every year.
I mean, we use, you know, one series of data, which is, we are quarterly
sense of employment wages, which is kind of a, more of a, a universe of the data
that we have from employees.
And we use that to benchmark against the estimated data that comes in from,
from the two series you talked about.
We recalibrate the models and re-estimate the coefficients and then use those
going forward.
So as far as historical data, once that benchmarking has reoccurred and the
data's been updated.
We for all practical purposes just dismiss a previous data because it's
simply irrelevant, irrelevant for us because we've got new data.
We've got updated data.
We've recalibrated the models.
And so we use the, you know, the latest and best data that we have moving
forward.
So no, this time around there, you know, we didn't see very many or any
significant changes actually going forward and they revised it back
anywhere from a year back to five years and everyone's a while further.
So all our, our graphs and trends that we see are pretty much intact.
Yeah.
Thanks for that.
So Dennis, let's, let's talk about what, what we might see with the spring,
the spring hiring.
And this has been a very atypical winter with the lack of snow.
And so at the same time, though, you know, maybe, maybe there's a little
bit of stormy weather on the way here for, for parts of the state.
But, you know, what, what do you anticipate in terms of spring hiring?
Or is it, is it still too early to say?
Are we seeing anything in terms of job postings increase or things
that you may be hearing anecdotally as you travel the state?
Well, we, yeah, I mean, we, people are still hiring from what they're
telling us and they're moving into the spring season.
You know, you get a lot of ramp up in the leisure and hospitality sectors,
for example, it has been tough on the winter tourism side of things,
especially up the northern part of the state with, with the warm temperatures
and no snow.
So they've kind of been, been taking a bit of a hit there,
especially on a seasonally adjusted basis.
On the construction industry going forward, we expect to see more of the same.
We've had some pretty good construction numbers on the seasonally adjusted
basis because of some of the mild weather that's going on and some of the
projects, although they're getting better and better at year round construction.
But going into the spring, as we, as we've talked about,
we've got businesses are healthy, consumption is healthy, wages are up,
people are spending that drives the economy and now the Fed has stepped in,
saying that they're looking to drop interest rates here in the next,
over the course of the next several months.
And that, that'll be taken well as the economy as things,
debt essentially is cheaper and borrowing is cheaper.
So there'll be, there should be a pretty good influence into consumption
and investment for that matter going forward.
All right. Are there, are there any other? Oh, I wanted to ask about manufacturing.
You know, we've talked in the past about some of the significant investment
into productivity increases, new, new plants, some of the, you know,
investment that previously had gone overseas is maybe coming back to the US
with onshoring. Are, are you at all bullish in terms of your outlook
for manufacturing jobs here in Wisconsin? What do you think will happen next there?
Well, yeah, I would say I was, I was bullish going forward for some of the reasons
you mentioned there with the nearshoring and onshoring that we've, you know,
that we've realized after the COVID supply change disruptions.
And the other thing that's going to boost that is if we have lower interest rates
and there'll be lower hurdle rates for investment in new machinery and plant
expansions and things like that will, that will, that will bode well for employment
and investment and the increases that we'll see, I would say, in manufacturing sector.
Yeah. All right. Well, I think that, that wraps it for today.
Again, Dennis Winters, DWD's chief labor market economist,
we're so grateful for your insights and the incredible work of your team.
On behalf of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, I'm Jennifer Sereno,
our assistant deputy secretary, and we appreciate all of your,
all of you joining us and spending your time to learn more about our labor market
and our economy. So thank you. Have a wonderful day, everyone.
Thank you, Jay.
Thank you.