October Jobs and Unemployment Numbers for Wisconsin

This is a terribly boring post I am writing so I will put the rest under the fold for those of you who are interested in our job market here in Wisconsin. So, just how is Wisconsin doing under Governor Walker?

Pretty well, from what I can see.

Here is the link to the document put out by the Department of Workforce Development. I have never really read one of these before so I found it quite interesting. The reason I found it is because I saw a headline in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to a story that said “State Loses 9300 Private Sector Jobs in October“.

That seemed like a bummer to me so I decided to take a look at the full report, and I was able to get some interesting facts from it:

While the total jobs number decreased in October, so did the overall unemployment rate.

Even figuring in the 9300 job loss for the period of September to October, October 2011 versus October 2010 private sector employment increased by 14,500 jobs.

Wisconsin’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is unchanged from October 2010 to October 2011. We are beating the US over all by a considerable margin – 7.7% unemployment vs. 9% (again, seasonally adjusted).

I look at this as a lot of pretty good news in this economy. A lot of my manufacturer vendors have a new mantra that “flat is the new up” – in other words, companies holding the line are actually gaining market share right now. I think from what I am seeing, this is right. Of course if you just look at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s headline you would think that the Walker administration is a job destroying machine – even though the report issued above says we have an overall job gain over the last year. Big surprise from the MSM. Not.