- Speaking of job numbers, our colleagues at Wisconsin Public
Radio have been crunching the latest in Wisconsin.
They show job growth has slowed over the past year.
WPR's Shawn Johnson has done the deep dive reporting on this with
graphics help from our partners at WisContext.org.
Shawn joins us now.
Thanks for your time.
- Hey Zac.
- How bad are the numbers for Wisconsin?
- What we have here, we already knew the numbers for Wisconsin
for 2016.
We knew it was a slow year for Wisconsin in terms of hiring.
About 11,000 jobs, which is much lower than we've had recently.
But what we found out with these numbers for 2016,
this apples to apples comparison with other states is that other
states slowed down too.
Wisconsin did end up being 33rd in the nation in private sector
growth in 2016.
It's about par for Wisconsin.
It was 33rd last year.
If you look back over the last six years,
the growth over that entire span,
Wisconsin has been 34th since Governor Scott Walker took
office.
So that's right around where we have been almost all the time.
- These are the gold standard numbers, correct?
- Right.
They are the quarterly census of employment and wages which as
the name suggests it's basically a census of employers.
An actual hard count of their employment data
of 96% of employers.
So they're as good as they gets
when it comes to measuring job growth.
They give you that state to state comparison,
a real good snapshot of where things stand.
- Wisconsin legislators love to compare themselves to Minnesota.
We've got a chart that shows where we are.
It looks like Minnesota's catching up?
- It's significant because we still have more people than
Minnesota, about 250,000 or so more people live in Wisconsin
than Minnesota.
As you see in those numbers, Minnesota is about ready to pass
us in private sector job growth.
It's gaining pretty quick.
Almost past in this report.
They are growing faster than Wisconsin.
Definitely.
No doubt about it.
- Regionally, Wisconsin is where they have been.
They're ahead of a couple states but behind a couple by
significant margins?
- If you look across the whole region,
Wisconsin again was 34th in private sector job growth over
the six year span.
It is behind states like Minnesota, Michigan,
toward the bottom of the pack there.
- Is this reflecting a national trend?
You said everyone was down about the same rate or is Wisconsin
lagging behind the nation?
- If you just look at 2015, when we added a lot more jobs
than we did in 2016, we were 33rd both years.
It is reflective of a national trend in that way.
It's definitely the case that other mid-western states
are growing faster than us.
The national economy is definitely growing faster than
us, about 1.3% growth.
While everybody is slowing down, what that means is,
we're still lagging behind.
If you go to other industries like manufacturing,
that trend continues.
- And manufacturing is critical because that's what Governor
Walker and the Republican have put a lot of money into tax
credits for manufacturing.
They've tried to say that this is the heart of Wisconsin.
We have to have manufacturing and we are still losing jobs.
- We are.
We lost just under 4,000 jobs, manufacturing jobs in 2016.
A bad year for us.
That was the first year the new manufacturing tax credit
was in place.
The state was spending roughly $300 million a year on this tax
credit to boost manufacturing at a time that the state lost
manufacturing jobs so that's a bad year for Wisconsin.
However it was one of 28 states that lost manufacturing jobs in
2016.
Not alone, although it does go to show the limited power
of that tax credit.
- Governor Walker has been talking a lot about the
unemployment rate.
It's the lowest since World War II is what he's saying.
How can we have such low unemployment and still no job
growth at the same time.
Are those opposed or are they completely apples and oranges?
- They are measuring different things.
The unemployment rate is measuring the percentage
of--your friends and neighbors basically,
people who live in Wisconsin who are actively looking for a job
but don't have it.
There's a small percentage of people who are actively looking
for a job but don't have it.
If you are talking about job growth,
growing that group of people who have jobs
and growing that economy, that's where Wisconsin lags.
While we have low unemployment rate,
the economy is not expanding like it is in other states.
- So in his first campaign, Governor Walker pledged to help
create 250,000 jobs by the end of his first term.
He's nowhere close to that after the first term.
Does he have a chance to catch it by the end of his second term?
- Not if growth continues like it did in 2016.
He fell, as you mentioned, well short in that first term.
And that was a first term promise and a very explicit
promise to help the state create 250,000 private sector jobs.
We are, after 2016, that is about half way through the
governor's second term, about 70,000 jobs short.
If the state picks up hiring and starts adding jobs the way it
did earlier in the governor's term,
maybe that pledge is reachable in term two.
If it continues on the trend that we saw in 2016,
then no way.
- Shawn Johnson, thanks for your time.
- You're welcome.