With growing Madison-area employers, Dane County continues to hold the lowest unemployment rate in Wisconsin according to a report released Wednesday.
According to Wisconsin’s Work Net, Dane County had the lowest unemployment rate in the state this December at 3.2 percent.
This rate has dropped from 3.8 to 3.2 percent in the past year, John Dipko, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development said in an email to The Badger Herald.
Dane County has always been able to withstand big swings in the economy, David Phillips, director of Dane County’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said. When the economy improves, he said Dane improves with it. When it declines, Dane remains stable because it contains a broad cross-section of employers, he said.
“As far as getting people employed, the biggest thing is the diversity of jobs available,” Phillips said.
Dane County is home to state, city and county government capitals, major hospitals, growing companies and the state’s largest university. This diverse range of stable employers, Phillips said, protected Dane County during the economic downturn of the 2008 recession. Diversity in available jobs, he said, can prevent hardship on the overall economy even if one sector has difficulty.
The city of Madison, which houses most of these diverse government and corporate employers, had the second-lowest unemployment rate out of Wisconsin’s 32 cities, and has dropped from 3.7 to 3 percent in the last year, Dipko said.
The construction market has seen significant growth with the recovery of the housing market from its collapse in 2008, he said.
The growing construction sector has also accounted for much of the decrease in Madison’s joblessness, Phillips said.
“With the construction boom that’s going on, the trades have had lots of jobs added to the employment,” Phillips said. “Just look around at the number of apartment projects that are going on. That creates employment.”
The IT and biotechnology industries are also booming, according to Dipko, especially in the south central region of Dane County.
Phillips said the Verona-based medical software company Epic has been a tremendous source of growth for Dane County. Epic designs systems for medical records worldwide and employs over 8,000 Madison-area workers, he said.
With the growth of such industries, general unemployment trends continue to move lower, Dipko said. Dane County and Madison’s falling unemployment rates also reflect the overall trend in Wisconsin’s rates, which fell to 5.2 percent — a figure below the national average and a post-recession low, he said.
Phillips said government will continue working toward lowering unemployment and underemployment in Madison and the greater area of Dane County. The Office of Economic and Workforce Development is also pairing with the organization Big Step to promote hiring in trades to take advantage of the continuing building program, he said.
“Dane County continues to be an area where the employment has been stable and remains stable, and that’s due to the type of businesses and the type of employers we have and also the fact that we have a tremendous quality of life in Dane County, so people want to be here and want to work here,” Phillips said.
