Again, these numbers are unverified and their accuracy (and integrity) are questionable. But even if you want to give the numbers the benefit of the doubt, we already know that any gain which might have occurred in the first three months of that time period, when former Governor Jim Doyle's budget and policies were still in effect.
When Walker came out with these numbers, it should've raised a red flag with the gentle reader. It smacked of being nothing more than an exercise in damage control.
And indeed, that's what it was.
Later in the day, the job numbers for July came out, and they weren't pretty:
Wisconsin lost an estimated 6,000 private-sector jobs in July and the unemployment rate climbed to 7.3% from 7% in June and 6.8% in May, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the state Department of Workforce Development.That's a loss of almost 18,000 jobs in just the first two months since the recall election. In fact, the job losses in June alone catapulted the state back into the number one job loser in the country.
July marks the second consecutive month of deep private-sector job losses after Wisconsin lost a revised 11,300 private-sector jobs in June, which was the deepest job losses in Wisconsin in a year.
In the government sector, meanwhile, Wisconsin lost an estimated 500 jobs, led mainly by cutbacks in cities, counties and public schools. Net losses in both the government and private sectors led to an overall decrease of 6,500 total non-farm jobs last month in Wisconsin, the report said.
And as we all know, Walker said that after the recall their would be an explosion of jobs. It's more like an implosion than an explosion.
Sad to say, Walker still hasn't caught on to the fact that it's not working.
This morning, he was again on the radio with Charlie Sykes, doing the damage control spin before the bad news hit. In jaw-dropping audacity, Walker actually started blaming the poor job numbers on the upcoming presidential election, claiming that not knowing if President Barack Obama would be reelected and if the Affordable Care Act would be allowed to stand was causing uncertainty with business owners. Walker then blamed this "uncertainty" as being the reason that they weren't hiring. He then added that he new this because "business leaders were telling" him this.
Sounds an awful lot like the bullsh*t excuses he was tossing about during the time leading up to the recall election, doesn't it?
The frightening part is that I could really see Walker and his allies trying to really put the screws to our electoral process, all in the name of job creation. Kind of makes you really want to get out and help our progressive candidates, doesn't it? That way we could save democracy and get jobs to come back in one fell swoop.
*Alternative title: The Walker Budget Keeps Working! Part XCCCVII
Arbitrary and crass numbers from the admin...
ReplyDeletea press release over unverified figures employed for political cover. The jobless are people, too.
ReplyDeleteIs ANY of this information getting airtime on your local and statewide media? Is ANY truth getting through, besides blogs?
ReplyDeleteAlso important to note, that other states continue to gain jobs, so if Pres Obama is to blame... Well it just diesn't add up... Again. Pass the bull, he's good at that after all.
ReplyDeleteWEDC is the centerpiece of Walker's job program. It serves as a public/private recreation of what the former state Department of Commerce did, modeled on Bradley Foundation board member and Indiana Governer Mitch Daniels' public/private IEDC.
ReplyDeletePublic/private partnerships do not follow the same rules that former state Commerce Departments had to abide by.
They both were responsible for reporting job numbers to the U.S. government, who then verifies the state statistics.
Today they report that, just like the June 5 recall, Walker releases unverified job statistics to fight off criticisms of his job creation effort.
Daniels ran into trouble when his IEDC reported bogus numbers, counting yet-unrealized "promised" jobs and mixing those in with the actual jobs that had been created, which wasn't many.
This created a false, rosy picture of the IEDC program, which, when it was investigated, showed false job creation on factories that didn't even exist.
I don't know the real difference with Walker's statistics, but possibly what Walker is doing may be a recreation of what Daniels tried and did so poorly with.
@Anonymous 11 This is very interesting! If meemory serves me correctly when we looked at Scooter's job numbers around the time of the recall his biggest gains in jobs don't fall under a job sector they show up in some category titled other or something like that. I would guess that if you wanted to show bs numbers you might as well hide them in the hardest category to verify them in since we really don' know what job sector that fall under. Thanks to the rest of you also for sharing info. Keep up the good work Capper!
ReplyDeleteDon't forget that he was also holding off on the adjudication of thousands of teachers and education support staff that had gotten pinked slip to keep his numbers from appearing as bad as they really were. We are now seeing those job losses finally being reported.
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