Wisconsin Job Watch – August 2015 Data Update

Wisconsin’s unsteady labor market finally added jobs in July which offers good news in the face of the decline in jobs since March. In June, Wisconsin had the same number of jobs that it had at the beginning of the 2015 which was also and finally the same as number the state had before the recession began (December 2007). Over the last two months of summer, July and August 2015, some 20,000 jobs were added in the state. Wisconsin is now solidly above pre-recession levels, and also hopefully on a consistently positive job growth path as well. It is good news that Wisconsin’s labor market is finally larger than it was nearly 8 years ago. Still, the potential labor force in the state is much larger than it was in the past, and the jobs we have today are not sufficient to keep up with our population growth. As Figure and Table 1 make clear, Wisconsin still faces a significant jobs deficit and needs stronger growth to fill that gap. In order to simply provide the same opportunity that we had in 2007, Wisconsin’s “jobs deficit” now stands at around 102,000 jobs.