July was down, and we won’t have August numbers until September 20th (maybe a day earlier from DWD). Using official nationwide nonfarm payroll employment, Wisconsin employment is growing.
Figure 1: Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment (bold black), forecast based on US NFP (red) and +/- 1 standard error band (gray lines), and Department of Revenue May 2024 forecast (light blue lines), all in 000’s, s.a. Forecast based on first log differenced Wisconsin and US employment, 2021M07-2024M06, dynamically forecasted. Vertical axis is on log scale. Source: BLS, DoR (May), and author’s calculations.
Interestingly, this finding suggests that the July (preliminary) figure for employment will be revised upward, albeit with substantial slowing (the vertical axis is on a log scale so one can read flatter slope as decreasing percentage growth).
