Workforce statistics in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Colorado

Jake again has another excellent report on employment and unemployment numbers.

A recent report comparing Minnesota and Wisconsin leads Jake to point out how Minnesota job growth has outpaced Wisconsin, and that Wisconsin has trailed and even slowed when compared to both national averages and Minnesota’s employment growth. Yet, the mystery is that Wisconsin and Minnesota have similar if not identical unemployment rates. The North Star report concludes about Wisconsin:

To a significant extent, Wisconsin’s low unemployment rate is driven by a weak job market that discourages workers from entering or staying in the labor force.

I disagree with this conclusion. Folks in Wisconsin that remain here are staying in the workforce. They just are not collecting unemployment benefits. Rather, as I previously described, they are skipping unemployment completely and using low-wage, service work as a substitute for unemployment benefits. Hence, the unemployment rate is low in this state because it either forces workers to find new jobs immediately whatever the pay being offered or it discourages workers from staying in Wisconsin when one job ends and they have options for other jobs in other states.

In this regard, the population statistics Jake presents about Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Colorado are eye-popping.

At the start of 2011, when Walker and Dem Governors Mark Dayton (Minnesota) and John Hickenlooper (Colorado) took over their respective states, Wisconsin had more people living and working in their state – and a lot more when compared to Colorado (whose unemployment rate was higher than Wisconsin’s at the time, at 8.8%).

Household employment, Jan 2011
Wis. 2,831,200
Minn 2,737,400
Col. 2,486,600

Population, 2011
Wis. 5,705,812
Minn 5,345,967
Col. 5,116,411

Move ahead to today, and that gap has closed. To the point that Colorado may pass Wisconsin by 2020 in both stats if the trend continues.

Household employment, Aug 2018
Wis. 3,083,200 (+252,000)
Minn 3,015,360 (+277,960)
Col. 3,000,250 (+515,650)

Population 2017
Wis. 5,795,483 (+89,671)
Minn 5,576,606 (+230,639)
Col. 5,607,154 (+490,743)

And the growth in the Labor Force over the same period also reflects these trends.

Change in Labor Force Jan 2011- Aug 2018
Wis. +99,540
Minn +163,715
Col. +364,600

These numbers show that household employment in Wisconsin was nearly 3X population growth, whereas similar ratios for Minnesota and Colorado are approximately 1:1. The story in Wisconsin, then, is that folks are not staying around (the anemic population growth), and those that do are forced to take whatever work is available to them rather than trying to find the right job after collecting unemployment benefits for a few weeks (the low unemployment rate).

Minnesota and Colorado are creating modern economies that attempt to improve the lives of all. Hence, folks are flocking to those states, and job growth is matching their fast-paced population growth. Wisconsin, on the other hand, is well on its way to creating a backwater economy. Forward?