WASHINGTON: Wisconsin’s unemployment rate fell to its lowest point in 16 years, the state Department of Workforce Development said Thursday. The seasonally adjusted January jobless rate, 3.9%, was down two-tenths of a percentage point from December’s figure. And Wisconsin continued to best the national rate, which was 4.8% last month. At the same time, the pace of private-sector job creation here — a different measure — continues to be so-so, other recently released data show. Wisconsin added about 25,600 private sector jobs from September 2015 to September 2016, according to the most comprehensive source of employment numbers available, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
Those gains represented growth in private employment here of 1% — a pace that ranked Wisconsin 34th among the 50 states. Compared with other Upper Midwest states, Wisconsin’s growth rate exceeded those of Illinois and Iowa, but fell short of the employment growth in Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio. Wisconsin’s year-over-year employment growth rate has ranked in the bottom half of the 50 states every quarter for at least the last two years. Overall from the third quarter of 2012 to the third quarter of 2016, Wisconsin’s employment growth rate ranked 33rd, according to the census.
The census, which is overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, comes from job counts that almost all employers must file for unemployment insurance purposes. The third-quarter 2016 figures are the most recent available from the census. The monthly unemployment rate in Wisconsin comes from another data set based on a survey of 985 households and unemployment insurance claims.
