The Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) recently announced a new monthly publication titled Wisconsin Job Watch that would provide a snapshot of Wisconsin’s job picture and report on key recession trends.
“A lot of people are just trying to get a sense of the market,” said Laura Dresser, associate director for Center on Wisconsin Strategy. “Job Watch is just helping to draw that picture in an accessible way.”
The first edition of the Wisconsin Job Watch, reports on April’s data on the job climate in Wisconsin, and shows continuing decline, with manufacturing and construction sectors taking a particularly hard blow.
According to the April report, Wisconsin had 137,500 fewer jobs than when the recession started in December of 2007, and Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has nearly doubled since that time, and reached an all time high of 8.6 percent in April.
The report also states that Wisconsin has 54,300 fewer manufacturing jobs than it did in December and the most significant spikes in unemployment have occurred in the last sixth months.
According to Dresser, the report will be updated monthly about a week after the federal data is released. April’s data was released near the end of May, so May’s report will be generated near the end of June, she said.
The COWS’ Job Watch publication can be viewed here.
