Continued stagnation in July.

Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development (DWD) released today figures for July employment (release here).

Figure 1: Log private nonfarm payroll employment in United States (black), and in Wisconsin (red), both seasonally adjusted, and normalized to 2011M01=0. Source: BLS for US, and DWD for Wisconsin, and author’s calculations.

Figure 2: Log nonfarm payroll employment in United States (black), and in Wisconsin (red), both seasonally adjusted, and normalized to 2011M01=0. Source: BLS for US, and DWD for Wisconsin, and author’s calculations.

There were downward revisions to both series, pushing down the already pathetic June growth rates.

(Note that the more volatile estimates derived from the household survey indicate a loss of 1.4 thousand jobs in July, on a seasonally adjusted basis.)

Since January 2011, Wisconsin private nonfarm payroll employment growth has been a cumulative 2.8% lower than that for the United States as a whole, while NFP has been 2.1% lower.

According to these figures, private employment is now 105.1 thousand below the trend consistent with his promise to create 250 thousand net new jobs by the end of his first term (reiterated one year ago).

Figure 3: Private nonfarm payroll employment in Wisconsin (red), linear trend consistent with 250,000 net new jobs by 2015M01 (dark gray), and employment forecast from Wisconsin Economic Outlook (March 2014), quadratic interpolation. Source: DWD, Wisconsin Economic Outlook, and author’s calculations.

In order to hit the target by January 2015, the Wisconsin economy will need to generate 22.6 thousand net new jobs in each of every month until January. Mean job creation over Governor Walker’s term thus far has been 2.7 thousand per month. This suggests that it is unlikely that the goal will be achieved.

Data on Kansas, which has experienced stagnant employment in recent months [1], has not yet been released. I will update as soon as they are available. For depiction of June data for CA, MN, KS, relative to WI, see [2].