DWD reports April figures. This provides the following picture of Wisconsin macroaggregates.
Figure 1: Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment (dark blue), Philadelphia Fed’s first benchmark measure for NFP (pink), civilian employment (beige), linearly interpolated real wages and salaries deflated by national chain CPI (blue sky), GDP (red), coincident index (green), everything in the logs 2021M11=0. Source: BLS, BEA, Philadelphia Fed (1), (2)and the author’s calculations.
The unemployment rate actually fell from 3.0% to 2.9%, while the estimated labor force increased (keeping in mind the problems associated with series based on state-level household surveys ).
Employment is currently exceeding the (upwardly revised) forecast in the February Economic Outlook.
Figure 2: Nonfarm payroll employment in Wisconsin (bold black), November 2023 Wisconsin Economic Forecast (light green), February 2024 (light blue), in thousands, its Source: DWD, GoldenWisconsin Economic Outlook (various issues).
Given the relatively strong employment growth, it is surprising that perceptions of economic conditions in Wisconsin are so gloomy (even though perceptions of individual financial conditions are rather optimistic)).
