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After American wages plunged in the darkest days of the last recession, Wisconsin's personal net earnings have rebounded — but at an average annual rate that lags that of the nation and most of its Great Lakes peers, according to the latest government estimates released Tuesday.

Personal net income in the Badger State rose at an average annual rate of 3.2% starting from a base in 2009, the year that national wages bottomed out after the financial crisis on Wall Street threw the global economy into a tailspin, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

That compares with U.S. average annualpersonal income gains of 3.8% in the same 2009-'13 period. Wisconsin's income growth ranked the state at No. 35 out of 50.

Wisconsin's income growth also lagged most other Midwestern states that share similar economies based on factory cities and farm towns. In the 2009-'13 period, Minnesota led the Great Lakes region with 4.7% average net earnings gains (national rank: 7). It was followed by Iowa with 4.7% (8); Indiana at 4.2% (11); Ohio at 3.8% (20); and Michigan at 3.6% (24).

The only neighboring state to trail Wisconsin was Illinois, which has been struggling with a state government fiscal crisis. Net personal income in Illinois grew at an average of 3.1%, ranking it No. 38, according to the agency's data.

The findings became available when the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its state personal income estimates for 2013, which includes updated data tables going back to 2001. The numbers measure only personal income, not corporate or business income.

Interestingly, Wisconsin also trailed the national average in income growth during the rebound from the previous recession, ranking 41st with an average annual gain of 4.1% from 2002-'07, compared with the nation's 4.8% over that same span.

Charles Franklin, a social scientist and data specialist at Marquette University, says the figures indicate that personal wage trends are not a political phenomenon. Instead, they are yet another reflection of the fundamental structure of Wisconsin's manufacturing-centric economy.

"The data show that Wisconsin has been lagging the nation and the region for over a decade, and that that sluggish performance has spanned both the Doyle and the Walker governorships," Franklin said, referring to time frames that covered primarily the tenures of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, and Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican.

Tuesday's report is the latest to indicate that Wisconsin's recovery remains on track, even if the state's economy is moving at a below-average pace. And it shows how the nation as a whole has moved haltingly after the searing downturn that depressed wages 4.0% in a single year from 2008-'09 after Wall Street banks began to teeter and collapse under the weight of their high-risk subprime lending.

In its Tuesday report, the bureau's statement focused on the one-year changes in personal income from 2012-'13, the latest reporting period. In that time, average U.S. state personal income growth slowed to 2.6% in 2013 from 4.2% in 2012.

The main reason for the national slowdown was purely technical and affected all states by about the same order of magnitude. The start of 2013 saw the expiration of a two-year federal "payroll tax holiday" — a temporary reduction in the personal contribution rate for Social Security in 2011 and 2012, as legislated by Congress as one of its economic stimulus efforts in the wake of the 2008-'09 recession. When the temporary reduction expired, it acted like a subtraction in net earnings — and did so in all 50 states.

In that one-year time frame, Wisconsin's growth in personal income narrowly outstripped the national average. Wisconsin's average income grew 2.7% compared with the U.S. average of 2.6%, the agency said.

Wisconsin also led the other Great Lakes states in the 2012-'13 period: Michigan (2.5%), Ohio (2.3%), Indiana (2.3%) and Illinois (2.1%).

Among the 50 states in the one-year comparison, personal income growth ranged from a national high 7.6% in North Dakota, which is enjoying an economic boom that comes from newly opened oil and gas fields, to a low of 1.5% in West Virginia. Every state grew more slowly in 2013 than in 2012.

Apart from federal payroll reductions, different sectors of different states moved at different speeds, Tuesday's numbers make clear.

The three sectors that drove Wisconsin's wages in the latest one-year period were health care, construction and farming, in that order.

"Farming had a bumper year in terms of income growth," said Brian Jacobsen, a Milwaukee-area economist at Wells Fargo Bank.

Manufacturing, Wisconsin's single biggest employment sector, was mixed to weak, according to the data.

Income for durable goods manufacturing, which includes engines and electronics, contributed only 0.05% to the state's income growth, compared with a 0.08% U.S. average. Nondurable goods, like disposable packaging, contributed 0.12% to state income growth, beating the 0.04% U.S. average.

Even with the gains, however, Wisconsin's average personal income ranked 26th out of 50 states, effectively the national mean, according to the agency's data.

None of the income figures are adjusted for inflation, which eats away at the purchasing power of any gains in income. Nationally, in the 2012-'13 period, inflation slowed to 1.1% from 1.8% the previous year, the agency said.

Income is not the only indicator that Wisconsin has been a chronic slow-growth state. According to data last week from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wisconsin gained private-sector jobs in the 12 months from September 2012 through September 2013 at a 1.2% pace, which ranked the state 35th among the 50 states.

In that period, Wisconsin continued to trail the national rate of job creation as it has since June 2011. The United States created private-sector jobs at a rate of 2.1% in the 12 months through September, not quite double Wisconsin's 1.2% rate.