The report’s findings confirm one thing, and suggest a second. First, regardless of the different solutions economists have for remedying our troubled economy, there’s general agreement that difficult conditions persist.
Second, although the state is seeing hard times, not every community will feel the same hardships. Unemployment is not uniformly distributed across the state. Some areas will be harder hit, and some will react more sensibly to the hit they take, reducing the severity of its impact.
Wisconsin went the other way in June, losing another 8,200 jobs, according to the Center on Wisconsin Strategy’s monthly report.
Wisconsin has added 34,000 non-farm positions since December 2009, welcome news for a state that had been hemorrhaging jobs for the better part of two years.
But the number of jobs fell again in the April to June period, erasing some of the earlier momentum. Wisconsin is now down 162,000 jobs since the recession began in 2007, with the state’s job base sitting 5.6 percent below its pre-recession level.
“The severity of this recession stands out when compared to the three most recent downturns of 2001, 1990, and even that of 1981,” says COWS, a liberal UW-Madison think tank. “Despite the increase in jobs starting at the beginning of this year, jobs fell yet again in June and we have a long way to climb to reach pre-recession levels.”
Via June jobs report reveals recession’s still-tight hold on state.