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Madison - Announcing the best job numbers of his tenure with a splash last summer, Gov. Scott Walker left out the fact that his office had been told in an internal report that the monthly numbers were "very questionable" and "suspect."

The snapshot of jobs in the state is normally announced each month simply through a news release, but in July Walker traveled to Milwaukee to announce that the month before the state had gained a net total of 9,500 jobs, a big chunk of the net total of 18,000 new jobs nationwide for that month. It was announced at the time as the biggest monthly increase in jobs since September 2003.

The unusual announcement was made in the run-up to pivotal Senate recall elections last summer that were seen as a referendum on Walker's policies.

But three days before the announcement, Walker's office received a report from the state labor department that raised serious concerns about the numbers. The PowerPoint presentation was released to the Journal Sentinel under the state's open records law.

"Results, while (federal Bureau of Labor Statistics) approved, are very questionable," reads the first line of the report.

Walker has promised to create 250,000 private-sector jobs during his first four years in office. That promise has combined with the difficult economy to make the issue closely watched both in the Capitol and around the state.

So far according to the same monthly survey, there have been 20,100 net new private-sector jobs added since Walker took office in January. In every month since June, the state has lost jobs both overall and in the private sector, according to the survey.

Announcing the preliminary June numbers on July 21, Walker said they showed he had put the state on a better path.

"To have 9,500 net new jobs in the state at a time when the country saw just 18,000 net new jobs all across the country is incredibly good news," Walker said at the time, adding the increases were driven by a "rebirth in tourism."

The jobs announcement was the only one that Walker has made in a news conference this year, though he issued statements on two other months that saw an increase in jobs.

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said the administration was using the best numbers available and hadn't tried to hide the fact that they were preliminary. He said the Department of Workforce Development puts disclaimer notes in its news releases about the survey figures.

"I think we qualified it appropriately in my mind," Werwie said.

Numbers incomplete

The numbers cited by the governor are compiled and released by the state Department of Workforce Development and the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers have the advantage of being more quickly available, but because they are based on a survey of a sample of state employers and not a complete census of all of them, they can lack precision. They are always released first as a preliminary number that is revised the next month.

David J. Ward, an economist and president of NorthStar Economics in Madison, said the number can help show whether the state is gaining or losing jobs from month to month but shouldn't be relied on to give precise numbers on the monthly change.

"It's probably right in the general direction. It's the magnitude that's questionable," Ward said. "Does that mean that politicians don't jump on the numbers? They do."

A similar point was made in the presentation that was emailed to several of Walker's top aides by a Workforce Development official on July 18 - three days before the governor announced the figures. The email was part of a larger exchange with the governor's office on how the numbers should be presented.

"There is likely an increase of employment, however, the magnitude is suspect," the report reads.

The report said the increase in jobs was "questionable" because most of the jobs were created in tourism industries that "rarely lead employment growth" and were created outside the main metropolitan areas in the state.

Richard Jones, a Workforce Development spokesman, said the report is prepared as a regular briefing for the agency's top administrators. He said the comments in the report "reflect the usual caution (agency) staff advise in analyzing preliminary estimates that can change from month to month."

Part of the problem with the state's monthly jobs numbers, which have been used by both Democratic and Republican administrations to tout job gains, is that they are better for showing longer-term trends than monthly changes.

Tom Krolik, an economist with the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C., said the monthly statewide jobs numbers in Wisconsin are subject to a margin of error of plus or minus 9,500 jobs - about the same amount as the net increase in total public and private jobs that was reported for June.

Jones and Werwie from Walker's office pointed out that the preliminary private-sector jobs figure for June was actually revised upward the following month by almost 2,000 jobs.

"The bottom line is (the survey) numbers represented good news for the state," Werwie said in an email.

But in the meantime, the next installment of the monthly survey showed that the number of jobs in July dropped by 10,800 - almost as many positions as were created in June. Another internal Workforce Development report on the July numbers - also sent to Walker's office - registered few concerns about the July numbers but noted that the "June spike was always suspect."

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) said he had been skeptical of the June numbers released by the Walker administration.

"The numbers didn't seem to add up to me that it was as rosy a picture as they were saying," Barca said.