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Our tally shows more slippage in June

By James B. Nelson July 21, 2014

Wisconsin private-sector employment dipped by 1,200 in June, the latest step in the wrong direction for Gov. Scott Walker's top campaign promise.

The report, released July 17, 2014 by the state Department of Workforce Development, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, also revised down by 500 the May jobs tally.

Together, that's a step backward by 1,700 jobs.

But a Wall Street Journal piece published July 18, 2014 provided a much rosier -- and it turns out very inaccurate -- outlook for Walker. More on that in a moment.

The new numbers mean state employers have added 8,500 jobs in the first six months of this year, according to our calculations. That's in addition to the 91,813 jobs they added in the first three years of Walker's term.

So the total, according to our monthly calculation, is 100,313, or about 40 percent of the total Walker promised. That leaves 149,687 jobs to go before his term ends.

In order for Walker, who is up for re-election in November, to reach his goal, the state would have to add a total of 24,947 in each remaining month of the year. That's nearly what the state added in each year in the past three years.

For our tally, we use the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which surveys nearly all state businesses, to get the most accurate picture for Walker's first three years in office.

We use the use the less accurate monthly survey data to provide the most-up-to-date look at where things stand so far in 2014. You can see an updated graphic that shows our tally here.

The Wall Street Journal opinion piece published July 18, 2014 presented a very different, and very jumbled view.

"Wisconsin has added 178,000 private-sector and 71,055 total jobs since the governor assumed office in January 2011," wrote Allysia Finley, assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com.

"Yet its private economy has added 80,700 jobs in just the past five months. If the private job growth continues at this rate, Mr. Walker will have surpassed his goal by 40,000 jobs at the end of his first term."

When we asked the writer about her source for the data, she replied:

"I made an egregious error punching the numbers in from the (Bureau of Labor Statistics) BLS data, such that the numbers should be 8,700."

The piece was changed July 21, 2014 -- but without any indication to the reader it had been corrected. It now reads:

"Wisconsin has added 112,000 private-sector and 71,055 total jobs since the governor assumed office in January 2011."

Finley said she used Bureau of Labor Statistics figures and also said the data was also available at the Capital Times' website, which has a feature that follows progress on Walker's jobs promise.

There are several limitations with that feature.

First, the site uses a running total of the monthly jobs, not factoring in the more accurate annual reports. Its tally says the current total since Walker took office is 112,600 -- the same figure the Journal is now using.

The Capital Times count also leaves out the first few weeks of Walker's time in office.

Instead of starting with the December 2010 numbers, the last before Walker took office, their tally starts with the January 2011 numbers. That approach misses the first few weeks of his term, and a couple thousand jobs. Had those weeks been included, the total would be 114,600.

As for our Walk-O-Meter rating, it stays at Stalled.

Our Sources