Walker misses goal of 250,000 new private-sector jobs in his first seven years in office

John Schmid , Craig Gilbert | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In his first seven years in office, Gov. Scott Walker presided over an increase of 213,000 private-sector jobs in Wisconsin, short of the 250,000 new jobs the Republican promised in his first four years.

Walker is up for re-election in 2018 and job growth is expected to be a central issue, as it was in his previous races. Wisconsin’s inability to add jobs as quickly as Walker predicted as a candidate in the 2010 general election didn't stop him from winning an unusual 2012 recall election. Walker also won re-election to a full second term in 2014.

The figures released Thursday are from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, a data set overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Quarterly Census data are considered the gold standard of employment numbers. Unlike monthly jobs numbers, which are extrapolated from a survey with sparse sample sizes, the Quarterly Census data count jobs at nearly every employer.

Comparing the census job count in the final quarter of 2010, immediately before Walker took office in January 2011, through the final quarter of 2017, which is the latest available Quarterly Census data, the number of private sector jobs increased by 213,426 to 2.48 million, an increase of 9.4 percent.

Wisconsin lagged the nation in the pace of job creation in the seven-year period, when the nation added private-sector jobs at a 15.2 percent rate. Wisconsin ranks 34th out of the 50 states in the percentage increase (9.4 percent) of total private sector employment from end of 2010 to end of 2017.

When he was a candidate for governor in 2010, Walker promised that if he was elected, the state would add 250,000 private-sector jobs in four years.

Like the rest of the nation, the state's economy has added jobs since 2010, the low point of the last recession, when the state's unemployment index peaked at 9.3 percent.

Wisconsin's unemployment rate, which is calculated under a separate monthly survey, dropped in April to a record low of 2.8 percent.

In a separate statement on Thursday's data, the Walker administration noted that Wisconsin's wages have ticked higher. In 2017, wages in Wisconsin's construction sector grew 7.5 percent, and wages in the state's manufacturing sector grew 5.5 percent, according to the state Department of Workforce Development.