At mid-term, a look at where we stand and how we got there

With the Walk-O-Meter, we have tracked Gov. Scott Walker's top campaign promise -- that the state would create 250,000 private-sector jobs by the end of his four year term -- since shortly after the governor took office in 2011.

As the governor moves into the second half of his term, the jobs count will be increasingly scrutinized. Shortly before taking office, Walker said he encouraged the monthly monitoring by PolitiFact -- and said in December 2010 that he planned to provide a similar jobs count on his own web site. However, that never happened.

The Walker administration has taken a love-hate approach to the numbers.

Early on, Walker and administration officials celebrated increases in the monthly count. Later, they began criticizing the quality of the data and downplayed the figures.

Recent developments underscore the level of interest in the jobs promise, and affirm the approach we have been taking.

Our latest count put the number, as of the end of November 2012, at 37,011 new jobs since Walker took office.

We use two sets of data to arrive at that figure, which is tracked in a monthly graphic.

Highly accurate census data showed there were 27,811 jobs created in Wisconsin in 2011. For the best approximation, we add to that the net total of 9,200 jobs created in 2012, according to monthly Current Employment Survey reports issued by the Department of Workforce Development.

Walker recently used a different method and came up with more than twice that number of jobs. On Dec. 12, 2012, Walker said state employers created "just under 100,000” jobs. In an  appearance later that day he put the figure at a little more than 86,000 jobs.

We rated Walker's claim Pants on Fire because the figures came from combining full and partial year census data -- a move that members of Walker"s staff and other experts previously said should not be done because it mixes seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted data.

Walker's staff said he was referring to "raw data,” however he didn't include any such caveat in making his statements. And nowhere in jobs discussion has there been a previous mention of the use of raw data. And there was no explanation of what constituted "raw data.”

A state Department of Revenue report released about a week later, Dec. 20, 2012, provided some more insight -- and reached nearly the same conclusion on the jobs count as we did.

The report says the state "added approximately 38,000 jobs in 2011 and 2012.”

The report did not say what factored into the calculation -- or why it included, apparently, a projection about December 2012 employment. The initial Workforce Development report on December employment won't be released until Jan. 17, 2013.

The Revenue Department includes graphs that show the monthly and quarterly graphs moving in the same direction -- generally upward in the past year and a half.

"The next revision to the CES jobs data, due March 2013, will correct the deviation seen in the last four quarters to show the same trend the QCEW reports,” the revenue department report said.

The report projected that Wisconsin would add 36,000 jobs in 2013, and a total of 127,900 private sector jobs during Walker's four-year term. That"s would be a little more than half the number he promised.

The Revenue Department used seasonally adjusted CES data to create the report, a spokeswoman said. The data used for "the third quarter of 2012 was still forecast at the time the report was completed,” she said. Similarly, the report indicated that the fourth quarter 2012 figures were estimates as well.

When the full-year census numbers for 2012 are available in late spring, we'll use that as a new baseline. And we'll continue to use the monthly numbers -- listing the caveats and limitations that come with it -- for the most up-to-date count.

This promise remains In the Works.