Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:56 and sunset is 8:03, for 14 hours, 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1519, Ferdinand Magellan‘s five ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe. The Basque second-in-command Juan Sebastián Elcano will complete the expedition after Magellan’s death in the Philippines.
As hiring in America is in decline, and Wisconsin is part of America, it’s probable that what ails America will ail Wisconsin, too:
New job numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor paint a stark picture of America’s job market — and a University of Wisconsin-Madison economist said he expects upcoming Wisconsin jobs numbers to show a similar trend in manufacturing jobs.
The Labor Department released a report Aug. 1 showing weaker than expected job growth for July, with 73,000 jobs added.
But it was the report’s revision of May and June job creation numbers to under 19,000 for May and 14,000 jobs in June that painted a weaker picture of the U.S. economy — and led to President Donald Trump firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
…
The jobs report published early this month found a decline of 11,000 jobs nationally in manufacturing — an industry that Wisconsin has historically relied on.
[Professor of public affairs and economics at UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs Menzie] Chinn said this decline is to be expected based on how nations like China responded after Trump placed smaller tariffs on other countries in 2018.
“I wonder why it took so long for it to show up,” Chinn said.
Chinn added that the uncertainty from negotiated tariffs are taking a toll on Wisconsin businesses.
“If you have to decide whether you want to build a new factory or buy new equipment that’s going to be used to service exports, but you don’t know whether the markets for those exports will be there or you don’t know if you’ll be cost competitive … you’re frozen on both sides,” Chinn said.
See Trevor Hook, Economist expects Wisconsin manufacturing jobs to show decline amid poor national numbers (‘Economist Menzie Chinn tells ‘Wisconsin Today’ that new job numbers show a ‘drastic change’ in the trajectory of the nation’s jobs market’), Wisconsin Public Radio, August 6, 2025.
Today’s populism isn’t about economics, so when the populists see economic figures that they don’t like, they simply deny their accuracy, and advance their own fantastical economic theories. They’ll always have a rationalization, a ready-made excuse, to change the subject. One can find all sorts of ignorant, indeed, ludicrous economic claims the populists make, and it doesn’t matter much to them because for the die-hards and dead-enders, the primary goal is not economic at all.
Much better, for them, to deny economic measurements, or to fabricate their own, and get back to what matters most to them. Their task is cultural: to inflict retribution against their perceived cultural enemies. Any contention, claim, or argument they make about economics is simply a means to return to that primary, essential task.
Bad policy reaches many parts of the economy — Tariffs to Make Dorm Room Essentials More Expensive: