Put it in the books, folks – the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently completed a tally of jobs lost and jobs created in the month of October, and the results are less than reassuring for Wisconsin.
The BLS reported that Wisconsin lost 9,700 jobs, more than any other state, coming up dead last in the country for creating jobs. These are raw statistics, not weighted on a per capita basis.
To those of us who thought the First Law of Thermodynamics stated jobs could neither be created nor destroyed, all of this fuss about job creation and destruction seems rather confusing. Anyhow, in October, the U.S. added 80,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate fell from a staggering 9.1 percent to a slightly less staggering 9 percent. In Wisconsin, unemployment is hovering at 7.7 percent, though this does not include those who are jobless and no longer looking for work.
Wisconsin’s economy, on the other hand, is still stagnant and has yet to show strong signs of recovery from the recession. Even though making Wisconsin attractive to businesses and creating jobs have been two of Gov. Scott Walker’s priorities since his inauguration, little progress has been made by the state economy. A so-called special legislative session focusing “like a laser” on jobs spent more time on concealed carry, castle doctrine laws protecting homeowners who shoot intruders, abstinence-only sex education and affirmative action. Evidently, none of these initiatives improved employment.
October’s statistics show the state moving in the wrong direction, destroying jobs rather than making them.
Unfortunately, public schools have seen some of the worst job losses in the state. Although Walker claimed that the majority of school districts have seen an increase in employment, he neglected to mention the 4,700 school employees who have retired since the budget cuts. A survey conducted by the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators accounted for retirements and reported a net loss of 3,400 employees. Politifact, a watchdog group based in Florida that partners with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and fact checks claims such as this for accuracy, rated Walker’s analysis of employment in the school system as “false.”
In general, Walker’s job creation plan has focused on making Wisconsin an appealing destination for large businesses with tax breaks, weaker unions and legal immunity from consumer litigation. This top-down approach to economic recovery is reminiscent of trickle-down economics, also known as Reaganomics. The ultimate goal is an economic recovery led by leaders of industry and major corporations. It is hoped that if the state makes life easy for these corporations, they will repay this investment by creating jobs and bringing Wisconsin back to full employment.
The main issue with Walker’s job creation plan is that it is not working. His mantra of an economic recovery led by the private sector has proved itself to be the pipe dream of fiscally conservative advocates of a small government. State politicians who are counting on the private sector and the “free market” to stabilize itself after a recession like the one Wisconsin went through are washing the problem of unemployment and job losses off of their hands and hoping for trickle-down solutions from a sluggish Wisconsin economy.
A viable road map to economic recovery in Wisconsin would include both macroeconomic solutions such as Walker’s and microeconomic solutions such as the microloan program that University of Wisconsin junior Alex Rosenthal launched this summer. Rosenthal’s non-profit, the Madison Fund, plans to provide at least 10 loans of $1,500 to $3,000 in the next six months. These loans will go to entrepreneurs who are committed to starting a small business but have no source of funding. Rosenthal says that the ultimate goal of the fund is to “create jobs in Madison.”
Microloan programs have had great success in developing countries such as Bangladesh. They have not been nearly as prevalent in the U.S., but there is no reason that they will not be just as effective at spurring economic development and creating business opportunities for the unemployed.
Wisconsin’s job situation could be greatly improved if politicians took efforts such as the Madison Fund seriously and explored the possibility of implementing similar programs on a larger scale. In order to improve on Wisconsin’s October job losses and deal with an unemployment rate that has not improved since the recession, the state government must deal directly with the unemployed and create jobs in small businesses. To date, Walker’s attempts to create jobs have been limited to big business, and statistics show that this is failing.
Wisconsin lost more jobs than any other state in because lawmakers have not been looking for solutions that directly impact unemployed Wisconsin residents. This is an embarrassment for a state government that claims be focusing “like a laser beam” on creating jobs.
Charles Godfrey ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in math and physics.
