Jobs data, unemployment, and a lack of wage growth

Jake has been providing excellent coverage about the current economic and jobs data and how wage growth here was been more of an illusion than a reality.

In July 2022, Jake reported that unemployment in Wisconsin has been at record lows — below 3% — but that job growth is stagnating.

What this indicates to me is that things are actually still very healthy in Wisconsin’s jobs market, but we still can’t find enough people at publicly facing service jobs to have a typical round of Summer hiring. Some of this may be wage-related, but I also think it is due to a demographic issue that the state has been dealing with for several years.

This is something touched on by the Wisconsin Policy Forum as part of a wider discussion of the changes in the state’s jobs market in the COVID era.

“In the past, we have discussed how Wisconsin’s aging population, low birth rate, and lackluster net migration figures have led to a reduction in the working-age population (here defined as individuals between the ages of 18 and 64). The Wisconsin Department of Administration projects the state’s working-age population will remain roughly the same size – if not decline slightly – until at least 2040.

“Indeed, from 2010 to 2019, Wisconsin’s working-age population declined by 1.0%. While the state’s overall adult population (ages 18 and older) is growing year-over-year, there is a much more rapid increase in those over the age of 65. In other words, Wisconsin’s residents are reaching a typical retirement age at a much faster rate than they are entering the workforce, shrinking the overall labor pool. On top of that, the pandemic caused more people to retire at earlier ages, and it is still unclear to what extent those retirees can be lured back into the workforce.”

All of this information indicates we have a state that seems to be maxed out on workers, and needs to find ways to attract more people to come here.

As confirmation of these findings, Jake previously noted that job growth in construction and manufacturing in Wisconsin has also been stagnating.

As Jake described in June 2022:

But even with another 54,500 jobs added in the state since May 2021, Wisconsin’s 1.9% rate of job growth is less than half the 4.5% rate of growth the nation has seen in that time period. And with 2.9% unemployment in a state that has labor participation more than 4% above the national average, it makes me wonder just how many more jobs can be added in the state today.

* * *

It also tells us that the longer-range challenge for the state is to get people to locate to a cold-weather place that traditionally hasn’t paid as much as nearby big markets like Chicago or the Twin Cities.

And, in May 2022, Jake was reporting about “gold-standard” job numbers in Wisconsin that:

So what the QCEW tells me is that our state still has jobs left to gain, but our 2.8% unemployment and relatively low population growth might mean there isn’t much more to gain back. The monthly jobs reports have been positive so far in 2022 (up by nearly 30,000), but let’s see if that growth in wages can start matching the US rate, and can keep workers ahead of the rising prices that we have seen in this year.

Like Wisconsin, Minnesota also has been experiencing record low unemployment. The Economic Policy Institute discusses this low unemployment rate in Minnesota and what it may actually mean.

First, the number of jobs that exist now is still less than what existed before the COVID-19 pandemic.

And yet, every single one of these states still had fewer jobs in June than before the pandemic. EPI’s Economic Indicators page shows that the United States is still down 524,000 jobs from its pre-pandemic peak. If we account for population growth over the last 2.5 years, the country has 3 million fewer jobs than we would expect if pre-pandemic trends had continued.

Second, labor force participation — the number of people working or looking for work, called an LFPR — is also down from what existed prior to the pandemic.

In Minnesota, the LFPR in February of 2020 was 70.8%. This was considerably above the national average of 63.4%, reflecting Minnesota’s strong employment numbers. By June of 2022, however, Minnesota’s LFPR had dropped 2.3 percentage points to 68.5%. That is larger than the national drop of 1.2 percentage points, from 63.4% to 62.2%. This means that while there is a historically low share of Minnesotans who say they’re looking for work and can’t find it, there is also a substantial share of adults in Minnesota who, since the pandemic hit, are no longer working and not looking for work. In fact, Minnesota’s decline in labor force participation from February 2020 to June 2022 is the 9th largest in the country.

Third, inflation is disconnected from these employment and unemployment numbers.

EPI’s Josh Bivens has explained in detail how current high levels of inflation are the result of global supply-chain problems caused by the pandemic and corporations exploiting the situation to extract larger profits than normal. If low unemployment was a primary driver of inflation, we would see an increase in wages above the rate of inflation, but the opposite is happening. Wages, far from contributing to price increases, are lagging behind price increases, and wage growth is decelerating significantly.

Fourth, the sectors of strong job growth are areas that are attracting new employees who previously were not looking for work at all.

In June, 73.1% of people who were newly employed were not counted as part of the labor force the month before. That is, according to the data, nearly three-quarters of the people who got a job in June weren’t looking for a job in May. This strongly suggests that there are many people interested in re-entering the labor force if there are good jobs available to them, jobs that allow them to balance work and care responsibilities, and jobs that adequately protect their health and safety.

Fifth, job growth, then, is highly dependent on policies that make what a few employers are doing to make work more flexible and to offer higher pay into a baseline for what all employers offer their employees. These policies include:

• expanded social and economic supports for child care and elder care
• criminal justice reforms that prevent arrest and conviction records from being used to deny employment opportunities
• economic support for affordable housing where jobs are located

Indeed, racial and ethnic disparities in job growth continue to exist at staggering levels.

Unemployment for Black workers continues to run nearly twice as high as that for white workers, and Hispanic workers have an unemployment rate 30% higher than white workers. These disparities persist—in both employment and wages—even when controlling for education and qualifications.

Sixth, because there is no actual connection right now between wages and inflation, higher wages in general are still urgently needed.

Simply put, higher wages attract people to the workforce. For example, shortages of teachers, school bus drivers, and other education employees are directly tied to the low wages of those jobs. States must also set higher wage benchmarks for home health care workers, too, as demand for those jobs is set to skyrocket in coming years. Additionally, supporting workers’ rights to organize unions is a vital tool in building a strong economy for all Americans.

Last, but by no means least, the minimum wage needs to be increased. Many states and cities have increased their minimum wages in recent years, with no discernible impact on the price of gas and oil, food, cars, or semiconductors. A federal $15 minimum wage would lift wages for tens of millions of low-wage workers across the country. In terms of purchasing power, the federal minimum wage is at its lowest level since 1956.

The summer 2021 unemployment situation

Several folks have forwarded to me different articles that describe the current unemployment situation.

An article in Dissent establishes that the current attack on pandemic unemployment programs is mostly just another kind of attack on working folk.

Across the country, workers have used the health and safety concerns posed by the pandemic and the enhanced unemployment insurance provided by the CARES Act to renegotiate the basic social contract that governs the American workplace. As social-distancing restrictions end and employers look to meet customer demand, pandemic unemployment benefits—which increase the amount in weekly income and the length of time that workers can claim it—have empowered working people across the economy.

Nationally, wages at the bottom of the labor market experienced a huge jump in April 2020 and continued to rise. Average hourly earnings in retail are up a dollar since May 2020, and over $1.50 since before the pandemic. In education, hourly earnings are up ninety cents since May 2020. As one indication of confidence in individual bargaining, workers are quitting at a historically high rate. Four million workers, nearly 3 percent of the labor force, voluntarily left employment in April. Workers who quit are not eligible for unemployment insurance: they are changing jobs to look for better pay and treatment.

The Biden administration has professed a commitment to creating a bargaining environment more favorable to workers. “It is the policy of my Administration to encourage worker organizing and collective bargaining,” the president wrote in his April Executive Order on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, which established a cabinet-level task force to promote those goals. The purpose of the order is to determine how the administration can begin to reverse the decline in union membership, to which the White House attributes “serious societal and economic problems in our country,” including “widespread and deep economic inequality, stagnant real wages, and the shrinking of America’s middle class.”

These goals are running aground in the face of a now ubiquitous talking point: according to the nation’s business press and cable news channels, a “labor shortage” created by workers’ increased bargaining power is holding back growth of the post-pandemic economy.

In Wisconsin, wages have not actually increased all that much during the pandemic, especially in sectors where pandemic job losses were greatest — hospitality and leisure — where a huge jobs hole has been created: “More than half of the private sector jobs lost in Wisconsin in 2020 were in the Leisure and Hospitality Sector, over 60,000 in all, which left us with nearly 22% fewer Leisure and Hospitality jobs than there were in December 2019. “

On the other hand, jake reports, “one sizable industry was nearly back to even in Wisconsin by the end of the year, and both managerial and manufacturing jobs lost a lower rate of jobs than the statewide level of 4.8%.”

Job change, Dec 2019-Dec 2020, Wisconsin
Construction -0.02% (-32 jobs)
Financial Activities -1.0% (-1,539)
Prof./Business Services -2.5% (-8,030)
Manufacturing -4.0% (-19,311)

And, Jake explains, many people are actually not receiving unemployment at all but moving on to “better” jobs on their own.

It’s pretty obvious what is happening here. Many people who lost their jobs as COVID broke out had to settle for other work, and I have to think that they and a lot of others have questioned the point of settling for menial jobs that don’t pay much, and put them in contact with large amounts of people that may not be vaccinated against a virus that has killed nearly 600,000 Americans.

So when they get a chance to move on for something that is safer and/or pays better and treats them better, they’re taking it. It just hurts the fee-fees of greedy, mediocre business owners that people are taking what they have (don’t) have to offer.

Jake’s look at the 2020 economic numbers reveals that Wisconsin has actually lagged the rest of the nation:

I also wanted to give you a look at how Wisconsin shaped up compared to the rest of the US in personal income. This number went up across the board in the US despite the COVID recession because of thousands of dollars in stimulus payments, enhanced unemployment benefits, and PPP bailouts. But Wisconsin didn’t have nearly the boost that most places had, with our income growth of 4.4% putting us down at 46th in the country.

We trailed in all three areas, particularly in those transfer receipts, which may reflect that we had fewer people collecting those higher unemployment benefits, stimulus checks and PPP funds. But we also trailed in earnings (Wis down 0.3%, US was up 0.3%), and lagging in wage and earnings growth has continued to be a worrying trend in the last decade in Wisconsin.

So, the problem in Wisconsin is not too much support for unemployment but too little. What worries current legislative leaders, apparently, is that even this minimal support is still too much. In These Times features the situation in Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, the legislature has voted to reinstate work search requirements for people receiving unemployment insurance, and declined Governor Evers’ proposal to add $15 million to the state’s unemployment system, as well as a proposal to add $28 million to worker training programs. Meanwhile, Republicans in the legislature have made moves to eliminate the $300 supplement from the federal government for UI.

[Gov. Evers says he disagrees with these actions but has not promised to veto the rollback of these pandemic unemployment programs. The evidence of these programs, however, . . . ]

“Unemployment rates in Wisconsin don’t support the overdrawn and quite dramatic, self serving conclusion that there are a bunch of people sitting on the sidelines who are ready to go to go to work in otherwise low wage, no benefit, insecure, crappy jobs if $300 a week, supplemental unemployment benefits were eliminated,” said Peter Rickman, president of MASH. At the same time, Rickman sees the current economic landscape as an opportunity for workers. ​“The way the labor market is constructed right now is such that the balance of power instead of being wholly and entirely in favor of the boss class, has had a slight tipping towards the working class,” he said.

Senator Melissa Agard (D‑16th District) argues that cutting UI won’t put people back to work as much as it would harm struggling families. ​“It’s really unfortunate that my Republican colleagues in Wisconsin are continuing down the same path that they were on pre-pandemic: making it harder for people to be able to get ahead and take care of themselves and their families,” Agard told In These Times. ​“Folks are having a hard time finding people for jobs primarily because they’re not paying people a living wage, or respectable wage to do those jobs.”

One final point to keep in mind is that Wisconsin’s unemployment system has a partial wage formula (not offered in most states) that means unemployment and work are NOT mutually exclusive. Many unemployed folk can and do work part-time while still receiving unemployment benefits.

Climate Change and jobs

With the role of winter in Wisconsin changing and the lack of winter work search waivers for unemployment benefits for those having seasonal jobs, consideration of new kinds of job programs is needed.

The UC Berkeley Labor Center has developed one such plan. This plan provides detailed recommendations that can be applied in other states to ensure quality jobs and which support workers under policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Action Plan identifies specific complementary labor policies that can be incorporated into climate policies to generate family-supporting jobs and career pathways for disadvantaged workers. The plan hows how training investments can deliver the skills required to perform these high-quality jobs and broaden access for all workers. It also provides recommendations on the transition for workers in declining industries to comparable livelihoods.

There are a series of short briefs for specific industries:

• low-carbon energy generation
• energy efficiency
• electric vehicle manufacturing and charging infrastructure
• public transit and reducing vehicle mileage
• trucking
• waste

Upcoming testimony before a Senate Committee

Update (28 Jan. 2021): TMJ4 is perhaps the only media outlet in the state that actually describes what happened at the hearing over current problems with unemployment claims and how any computer updates are not a viable solution for those currently dealing with this mess.

I am scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee on Economic and Workforce Development this Wednesday, January 27th, at a public hearing starting at 10am, concerning Wisconsin unemployment.

Given the general lack of information about what is actually happening with the unemployment crisis, I have provided the committee a 199pp. PDF of the materials and a 3pp. letter describing those materials.

WisEye will be carrying the testimony live.

Some of the charts and tables in the informational packet include:

The year of 2007 should be considered a base year for how a healthy unemployment system in this state should function.

Notice that during the Great Recession first payments of benefits for the most part continued to be timely.

Except for Minnesota, Wisconsin has had fewer PUA claims that many other states and has paid far fewer PUA claims as a percentage than other states. New Jersey, like Wisconsin, has a COBOL mainframe for their unemployment claims. Yet, New Jersey’s handling of PUA claims shows incredible success compared to Wisconsin.

Update (27 Jan. 2021): My testimony and the testimony of others, including the Department, is available here. My testimony starts around 11am (an hour into the hearing), and runs 30-40 minutes. Here is a recap of my remarks about how disabled workers are being treated:

$1.1 billion is the amount available in the unemployment trust fund at the end of December 2020. $1.1 billion that is not helping anyone but just sitting in a bank account.

Wis. Stat. § 108.01(1) (emphasis supplied) provides:

Unemployment in Wisconsin is recognized as an urgent public problem, gravely affecting the health, morals and welfare of the people of this state. The burdens resulting from irregular employment and reduced annual earnings fall directly on the unemployed worker and his or her family. The decreased and irregular purchasing power of wage earners in turn vitally affects the livelihood of farmers, merchants and manufacturers, results in a decreased demand for their products, and thus tends partially to paralyze the economic life of the entire state. In good times and in bad times unemployment is a heavy social cost, directly affecting many thousands of wage earners. Each employing unit in Wisconsin should pay at least a part of this social cost, connected with its own irregular operations, by financing benefits for its own unemployed workers. Each employer’s contribution rate should vary in accordance with its own unemployment costs, as shown by experience under this chapter.

So, money to pay rent and groceries, to dine out in restaurants, just to spend on consumer goods — WHEN there is a state-wide lack of consumer spending because of a worldwide pandemic — is not going out to the unemployed workers in this state who need it.

One group in particular has been hit hardest — the disabled.

Wisconsin is one of only two states that denies unemployment benefits to those who receive SSDI benefits. This eligibility ban was premised on the belief that only 50 workers would be affected by it.

That belief was not true. In any given year, there are 150,000+ SSDI working in Wisconsin (for 2019, see Table 27 at this link). To put that number in perspective, in the December 2020 jobs report for Wisconsin, there were 128,100 construction workers in this state, a ~22,000 short of the workers who receive SSDI benefits.

Wisconsin is allowing its employers to lay off these 150,000+ disabled workers and face no consequences for such layoffs. If unemployment was automobile insurance, then Wisconsin would exactly be saying that drivers could run over disabled people without any consequences to their auto insurance premiums. This is obscene.

So, a $1.1 billion unemployment trust fund has been built up on the backs of 150,000+ disabled workers in this state who by law cannot receive those unemployment benefits, against this explicit provision in Wis. Stat. § 108.01(1) (emphasis supplied):

Whether or not a given employing unit can provide steadier work and wages for its own employees, it can reasonably be required to build up a limited reserve for unemployment, out of which benefits shall be paid to its eligible unemployed workers, as a matter of right, based on their respective wages and lengths of service.

FoxConn is vaporware

Not much to say about the reporting by the Verge on the disaster that is FoxConn in Wisconsin. The picture presented in this article is of vaporware: no actual product plans were ever in place for anything in Wisconsin and the company has struggled since to come up with something.

Still, I do wish I could have raced some of those golf carts around the empty warehouse. That sounded fun.

The sad news is that politics continues to divide on reality. Empty buildings, nothing being manufactured, and an utter failure to even hire a minimum of 520 jobs (when the factory should be employing at least a 1000 now if it was legit; and it was expected to have 2080 employees at the end of 2019 on that path to 13,000) still does not matter to those who supported this project.

Terry Gou’s response continues to promise the world to the politicians who play ball with the company. At least good con men realize when the jig is up.

A billion dollars in land and infrastructure spending has been wasted on some empty buildings.

Update (29 Oct. 2020): Bruce Murphy runs down the actual costs of FoxConn: at least “$1.44 billion charged to the citizens of Wisconsin.” Yikes.

Pandemic claims are not going away

When the pandemic started, unemployment claims skyrocketed to numbers never seen before.

Others have focused on the total number of claims being filed. What may be more useful is comparing this increase in claims to what occurred when there was no pandemic — aka last year — and how the claims data has varied over time.

So, what makes sense, then, is a ratio of new claims being filed for the equivalent week last year when there was no pandemic. This ratio would indicate both how these new claims compare to when there was no pandemic AND how the unemployment picture is changing over time.

Unfortunately, this picture is unsettling to say the least.

Note: Here is the data for this chart:

w/e 2020  Week  Ratio
03/14/20    11  1.02
03/21/20    12  13.29
03/28/20    13  20.51
04/04/20    14  19.95
04/11/20    15  14.21
04/18/20    16  12.12
04/25/20    17  10.64
05/02/20    18  9.47
05/09/20    19  8.73
05/16/20    20  9.21
05/23/20    21  7.28
05/30/20    22  6.16
06/06/20    23  4.90
06/13/20    24  4.51
06/20/20    25  4.31
06/27/20    26  6.00
07/04/20    27  5.35
07/11/20    28  4.93
07/18/20    29  6.14
07/25/20    30  5.94

Source: https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/covid19/public/ui-stats.htm

In week 11 of this year, claims in 2020 were equivalent to the same week of claims in 2019: 1.02 to be exact. Then the pandemic struck the next week, and unemployment claims skyrocketed to 13x what was filed in 2019. For the next two weeks, the number of claims continued to increase to around 20x what was filed in 2019.

Even when the number of new claims began declining, they continued at more than 10x the number of claims filed in 2019 for the next three weeks. Then, for another three weeks, initial claims continued to run at around 9x or 10x the number from 2019.

Only by week 21 did the number of initial claims come down to over 7x the number of 2019 claims. Since then, the number of initial claims has continued to hover around 6x the number of unemployment claims filed for the equivalent week in 2019. And, it seems that this trend will continue at least for the next several months.

So, in the best circumstances this pandemic has led to new unemployment claims continuing to be filed at 6x the rate of unemployment claims in 2019.

Note: This data is only for regular unemployment claims. Independent contractors and those with insufficient earnings to qualify for unemployment in the first place likely have never filed a claim for regular unemployment benefits in the first place and so are excluded from this data. In other words, the unemployment picture is being under-reported with this data.

At this rate, the question will soon be who in Wisconsin has NOT filed an unemployment claim, as the state’s workforce is only around 3 million in toto. I hate to say it, but these numbers are approaching Great Depression levels of joblessness. There is no indication — especially with Covid-19 cases on the rise — of any possible turn around with the economy any time soon. So, new unemployment claims will likely continue to be much higher than last year for months to come.

Note: In a robust economic recovery, we should expect the ratio of 2020 to 2019 claims to go smaller than 1.0. Pent up economic demand would lead companies to increase hiring to meet the accelerating demand for their product. Does anyone even pretend to talk about that kind of economic activity right now?

Second, all of us need to understand that this unemployment problem is not going away anytime soon. With so many initial claims now in the system, it will take months just for the folks currently with claims to find the same work they had before the pandemic. And, with new initial claims continuing to be filed at a record pace, the number of unemployed is now probably equal to the number of workers in this state who are outside the unemployment system. When winter arrives and many seasonal employees are laid off, the state’s economy will take another tremendous hit.

Accordingly, the economic stimulus that unemployment offers is currently an essential component of the economy and is keeping what economic activity that currently exists afloat. The loss of the $600 PUC benefit this week is going to have dire consequences, even in Wisconsin when too few have managed to receive any unemployment benefits at all. The end of 2020 when many if not all of the current CARES Act benefits expire could become a fiscal cliff for Wisconsin and the nation if nothing is done to extend these programs into 2021.

Third, this continued number of initial claims at roughly 6x the rate of last year indicates that the Department’s strategy of simply hiring more people to process these claims is unworkable. The Department’s July 13th news release about having 1884 staffers (1380 more than the 504 the Department had prior to the pandemic) is still wholly inadequate to handle the deluge of initial claims being filed.

Even with new initial claims now settled at 6x what was being filed before the pandemic, the Department’s increase in staff is only 3.75x what existed prior to the pandemic. To properly staff up for the number of initial claims currently being filed, the Department needs to have 3024 staffers on hand. And, that level of staffing would only work if initial claims remain at only 6x and do not rise any further from 2019 levels.

The Department cannot fix this unemployment problem in this state by hiring all of Wisconsin to process all of the unemployment claims. The Governor and the Department need to start talking now about some new policy choices to make the unemployment claim-filing process easier and more manageable. And, a jobs programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps are probably in order as well.

Source: https://readtheplaque.com/plaque/the-c-c-c-worker

I know broadband access is a state-wide problem. Getting cheap and effective Internet access to folks in this state would do everyone a world of good, both in the short-term (jobs) and the long-term (more jobs). A British village can do it. Why not Wisconsin?

 

Another reason why Wisconsin UI is faring so poorly: terrible job growth in 2019

Jake has the 2019 gold standard numbers, and they are just terrible.

Wisconsin’s rate of job growth started to decline in mid-2016, and has pretty much gone down since then, with the except of a Bubbly 6 months after the GOP Tax Scam was signed into law. But last year was a new depth, with barely more than 5,000 jobs added from December 2018 to December 2019, and we even slipped below 0 in November before a small rebound in the last month of 2019.

Jake compares the jobs picture in Wisconsin with Minnesota, and the comparison does not go well for Wisconsin.

Total jobs added, QCEW 2010-2019
Minnesota    330,103
Wisconsin    227,993
Difference   102,110

Jake further points out that the 2019 data for Wisconsin reveals that Dane County by itself is providing the job growth for the entire state.

Jobs added, Wisconsin 2019
Dane County    +7,446
REST OF WIS    -2,367

As Jake concludes:

This data sure seems to indicate that we could learn something by being more like Minnesota and Dane County, because that’s what was working before the COVID-19 recession hammered everyone starting in March. And today’s report is yet another blaring piece of evidence of just how much we have been held back during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. It needs to be ended ASAP, and it goes well beyond changing who is in the Governor’s office.

Because job growth has been so anemic in Wisconsin, unemployment is that much more important as a wage replacement. But, as indicated previously, Wisconsin’s policies over the last decade have made unemployment much, much more difficult to get. Now with the pandemic and absolutely no jobs available at all, folks who have been suffering under meager job growth the past decade have absolutely nothing to fall back on other than unemployment. And, that system is designed to be difficult and cumbersome.

The Evers administration could start fixing this system by actually following the law rather than subverting it, as it is currently doing by denying PUA benefits to the disabled (see the discussion of SSDI in this post). And, the Evers administration could take a look at what our neighbor in Michigan is doing to make an equally difficult unemployment system at least less burdensome on claimants and the workers who have to administer that system. The results of these efforts in Michigan speak for themselves:

Chart courtesy of NELP

In comparison to Michigan, Wisconsin will only begin to start paying out PUA benefits next week.

Wisconsin remains . . .

Economic bad news is everywhere

Accolades over the last few years about a glowing economy and booming Wall Street always seemed off, and recent economic news is putting these claims under the knife.

Certainly, the crumbing stock indexes and continued poor showing of the bond markets indicate that stock buy-backs have created a bubble that is now popping.

For those outside Wall Street, the economy has been ho-hum at best and downright hostile to most. Initial jobs and income numbers are seemingly always being revised downward as new data emerges. Wisconsin farmers continue to take it on the chin. And, the accelerating trend of companies contracting out rather than hiring employees is leading more and more folks to become second-class residents of these companies.

The economy and job growth have not been good for a long time, especially here in mid-western states like Wisconsin. In other words, not only is the bucket empty, but it may have no bottom. As Jake explains:

More than 2 years later, we are back below 26,000. That’s despite all of the corporate tax cuts and stock buybacks that have inflated earnings per share. And now we have slower job growth and GDP growth than we were seeing before the Tax Scam became law.

I think that reality had a lot to do with the market falling apart with today’s rate cut. The Fed’s message wasn’t “We will be OK and get by.” It was “THINGS ARE REALLY MESSED UP AND WE FEEL WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING BIG!” And now, there isn’t much left that the Fed CAN do.

FoxConn: Less is less

As part of its deal with Wisconsin for state monies being handed over, FoxConn’s job numbers are put forward every December (but will not be publicly revealed until March or April of 2020).

Last year, FoxConn was short the 260 jobs it needed for 2018 when it only hired 156 employees. For 2019, FoxConn needs 520 jobs, and the company is claiming it has already met that goal.

Note: If FoxConn manages to have 520 employees in 2019, it also gets the 2018 funds it originally missed out on. Good deal for FoxConn, it seems.

But, media reports by Jake, Murphy’s Law, the verge in October, and the verge in December indicate that FoxConn is doing little more than moving shells on a table: there appears to be nothing actually going on other than some relatively small construction of warehouse-type buildings even while the company claims that everything is fine.

Indeed, the verge’s December review scuttles any possible thought that FoxConn is doing anything considered to be manufacturing at all. All the buildings FoxConn has bought are still empty, and plans that originally should be nearing completion are delayed again and again (the latest is that LCD manufacturing of any kind will not start until 2022).

As a neighbor of mine remarks, FoxConn is a complete mystery. Nothing the company is actually doing seems to make any sense whatsoever from the perspective of trying to be a viable project of some (or any) kind.

As Jake noted on January 1st of this year, even Mt. Pleasant, which still formally embraces FoxConn, is holding off on transferring to FoxConn more of the land that the village previously bought from homeowners for the project. Given FoxConn’s lack of activity, there are questions over whether FoxConn will ever use all of this land. As Jake observes, Mt. Pleasant is facing an additional $112 million of debt in 2020, and so it is facing some serious debt problems:

Take a look at that $86.2 million in debt principal and $9.0 million in interest. Basically Mount Pleasant has to pay off one debt payment by borrowing more money, and they also plan to keep adding $48 million in sewer and other water work, along with other expenses. So $8.4 million in taxes from Foxconn compared to $143 million in expenses that are earmarked to their specific TID district? And a lot more in new debt expenses for the future? Doesn’t seem like a good deal to me.

Even with the extra borrowing, they’re still bleeding the Foxconn district’s balance down from $103.3 million to less than $72 million, which means that if more money and tax base isn’t returning to the Foxconn district in the next few years (and that seems increasingly unlikely), there’s even more debt and more borrowing that’ll have to happen.

Or…the Village will go bankrupt because it can’t (or won’t) keep going further into debt to keep pumping false hope into this white elephant. At that point, state taxpayers would likely be asked to bail out Mount Pleasant, based on this provision that is part of the Fox-con package approved by the GOP Legislature in 2017 and signed by then-Governor Walker.

Given that FoxConn has quietly (see the verge’s December reporting) transferred control of its Wisconsin operations to a subsidiary called Foxconn Industrial Internet (Fii) that is NOT part of the original FoxConn deal, it seems that FoxConn is preparing to walk away and leave Wisconsin suing a shell company that has few to any assets in Wisconsin for all of the broken promises.

Update (10 Jan. 2020): Corrected some typos and re-wrote sections of the paragraph on Mr. Pleasant’s debt problems.

Economic indicators at the end of 2019

As usual, I am piggy-backing on the good work Jake is doing.

The economy of late

Over the past several weeks, Jake has been posting extensively about the economic reports being released.

• Store closings are up, manufacturing activity is on a downhill slide, and private construction spending is down considerably.
• Growth in personal spending is nearly flat of late, manufacturing orders are bouncing back somewhat, and defense spending is what is providing the big economic boost right now.
• A recent federal reserve report indicates that the economy of the mid-west is sputtering in general but that home sales and consumer confidence are climbing somewhat.

Gold standard job numbers

Reports on these numbers are a daily occurrence of late. As of Friday, Dec. 6th, the Department is touting Wisconsin as a national leader in job growth.

Yes, Jake notes, wages are up, but there are some holes to this news that means no one should be popping champagne corks just yet. Jake observes that these job numbers actually under-report the growth that was being reported in the monthly jobs reports. The recent rise in unemployment during the latter half of 2019, in addition, could either indicate a hotter, more competitive job market or a job market that is beginning to cool down.

Jake also points out some of the key takeaways from the Wisconsin’s Shifting Job Market report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. This report provides an examination of the job growth (or lack of growth) in Wisconsin over a ten-year period, from 2008 to 2018. As Jake explains:

The Policy Forum goes on to note that the Madison area has done exceptionally well in this 10-year time period for overall job growth, and in particular in these high-paying, educated/skilled positions.

For example, the Madison metro area has experienced strong job growth in general since 2008, with employment growing by over 54,000 overall (16%) and in 17 of the 22 occupational groups. Perhaps most strikingly, employment in highly coveted computer and mathematical occupations—which include software and web developers and computer programmers—has led the way, growing faster than in any other group.

* * *

[Manufacturing jobs, on the other hand, have been stagnant or in decline, particularly in the Milwaukee area.] And that trend has not gotten any better in 2019, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that manufacturing employment in the Milwaukee metro area is at its lowest level in more than 8 years, with a decline of 2,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 12 months.

That being said, the Milwaukee metro as a whole has rebounded some in 2019, with health care being a huge reasons for its job growth. As have the 2 next largest metropolitan areas in the state, for that matter. While these numbers aren’t adjusted for seasonality (and therefore require a year-over-year comparison), the Madison, Milwaukee and Green Bay areas have done better for adding jobs than the rest of the state.

[One year] Job growth Oct 2018-Oct 2019
Milwaukee metro +11,800 (+1.3%)
Madison metro +4,700 (+1.2%)
Green Bay metro +2,400 (+1.3%)

The down side is that while the remainder of the state outside of those 3 metro areas accounts for just over 1/2 of the state’s employees, it’s actually lost 5,100 jobs (-0.3%) while the Bigger 3 have grown. And many of those [remaining] areas have also been stagnating in population growth with lower educational levels.

The full jobs data for the year from June 2018 to June 2019 also has some revealing information. According to Jake:

Remarkably, [Wisconsin’s] 0.40% rate of [job] growth and 39th-place rankng in the US put Wisconsin 3rd out of 7 Midwest states for private sector job growth, with only Minnesota (+0.61%) and Indiana (+0.70%) doing better than us. So unlike much of the 2010s, we’re not trailing much of our region, but our region is badly below the US rate of growth of 1.25%. Which sounds a whole lot like the 2000s before the Great Recession, which wasn’t good for the Midwest even before the economy caved in.

If you go into Wisconsin’s figures by county, this stat jumps out at you.

Private sector job change, June 2018- June 2019
Dane County +5,033
Rest of State +4,987

Total job change, June 2018 – June 2019
Dane County +6,595
Rest of State +2,745

That’s right, Dane County added more than half the private sector jobs in Wisconsin over that 12-month period, and over 70% of [total] jobs. And literally 1/2 of the 72 counties in Wisconsin LOST jobs between June 2018 and June 2019. Oh, but we’re the crazy hippie moonbats in Madison while the outstate GOPs are the ones in touch with how to grow business in 2019. Riiiight.

FoxConn

Jake has the latest on a Libertarian-leaning think tank pointing out that FoxConn truly is turning into a shadow theater of the absurd:

• The subsidies granted to FoxConn will depress economic activity in the state for a decade or more.
• The state is saddled with economic waste because of Wisconsin’s commitments to FoxConn that cannot now go to actual businesses that could use that money productively.
• A recent Fox-Conn announcement about developing its Green Bay facility contained just a fraction of what was originally announced for that facility (seems to be a pattern with FoxConn) and has been met with a ‘believe it when we see it response.’

Update (10 Jan. 2019): Changed spelling of Fox-Conn to FoxConn.