January report contains good news for governor

The January 2013 jobs report contained good news on several fronts for Gov. Scott Walker when it comes to measuring his top campaign promise -- that the state would create 250,000 private sector jobs by the end of his four year term.

-- The  report, issued March 14, 2013, said preliminary estimates showed the state added 12,400 private sector jobs in January 2013. This is based on a survey of about 3 percent of state employers and is a figure that will be revised in the months to come.

-- The report also refined -- the technical term is benchmarked -- monthly data for 2012. The result: an increase of 14,100 jobs over what had been tallied in the monthly reports for that year.

The benchmarking produced some sharp swings in the data from what was originally reported and already refined one time.

For instance, the monthly survey report for January 2012 said the state added 13,800 jobs. That got knocked down to 3,900. Similarly, the June report said there was a decline of 11,300 jobs, while the new report said the state added 2,100 jobs in that month.

A similar swing was seen when the 2011 data was benchmarked at this time last year. Then, the benchmarked figures for 2011, plus January 2012, said there was an increase of 6,000 jobs since Walker took office. Later data revisions put that figure at 33,700 for the same time frame.

Experts say that swings tied to the revisions of the monthly jobs data are expected because of the small sample size. More concrete numbers come from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which surveys some 96 percent of state businesses. The census figure for 2012 will be available in late spring.

Even those census figures aren't rock solid. The January 2013 jobs report said that the 2011 census total was tweaked up by 1,989 to 29,800 -- more good news for the governor.

Once again, the jobs report was issued along with statements from the administration criticizing the data as unreliable and prone to revision. Yet, early in his term, Walker held news conferences to take credit for monthly job gains, and in other months issued statements blaming national politics or recall elections for contributing to losses. Starting at the end of 2011, as a recall election loomed, Walker shifted to criticism the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the federal government) for its data collection methods.

The net effect of the most recent report: Our scorecard says the state has added a total of 66,000 jobs since Walker took office in January of 2010. That's about 26.4 percent of his promised 250,000 jobs.

This promise remains In the Works.