The Wisconsin DWD released the August 2012 job numbers today and things continue to go very poorly for the Walker Administration in terms of the governor's promise to create 250,000 new private sector jobs in his first four years. We were told that if the state balanced its budget on the backs of public school teachers and other state and local government workers, Wisconsin's K-12 students, and the UW system, the economy would mushroom and the private sector jobs would flow. Instead we have driven out experienced and talented teachers and other public employees, raised K-12 class sizes, decimated the University of Wisconsin budget and have a net private sector job loss since the Governor took office. Here is the scorecard of seasonally adjusted monthly private sector job numbers to date:
We were also told that privatizing the former Department of Commerce into the new Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) would lead to faster economic growth and more jobs. Today Paul Jadin the former mayor of Green Bay and the current CEO of WEDC announced that he was stepping down from WEDC effective November 1. Thus, in the first two years of Governor Walker's administration he has had three secretaries of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development and, soon, two CEO's of WEDC.
As of today, based on the job numbers released by DWD, Governor Walker needs to create about 9,600 private sector jobs a month for the remaining 28 months of his first term. He started out in January 2011 needing to create about 5,000 new jobs a month to fulfill his promise.
Next Tuesday we see the release of the August 2012 Coincident Index from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank. (See my last post on this index here.) Wisconsin has been mired in 47th place in this measurement of economic growth for several months, so we will see on Tuesday if there has been any improvement. Wisconsin ranks dead last among all the Midwestern states in terms of economic growth under this index.
It is not too late for the Governor to bring his grade up, but for now, close to midterm, his grade is an F.
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