Down, Down, Down

Wisconsin employment in May.

Today, Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development released monthly estimates (in addition to the QCEW figures discussed in this post).

Figure 1: Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment, 000’s, seasonally adjusted (blue). Source: WI DWD

Figure 2: Wisconsin private nonfarm payroll employment, 000’s, seasonally adjusted (blue), and trend consistent with Governor Walker’s August 2013 promise to create 250,000 net new jobs by end of first term (red). Source: WI DWD and author’s calculations.

Note that April figures were revised downward; total and private were revised down 3600 and 3400 respectively.

Since the employment figures are based on surveys, I would take the last eight months of data with a grain of salt. However, a downward trend over the last three observations suggests at a minimum some sort of slowdown.