LA CROSSE,WI (WXOW)--The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wisconsin lost more jobs in the past year than any other state.
According to the bureau, Wisconsin lost 23,900 jobs. That number translates into a loss of 17,800 government jobs and 6,100 private jobs.
The Walker Administration notes more than 17,000 jobs were added in January and February.
UW-L Associate Economics Professor Taggert Brooks said you can grab data from various periods in time and get two completely different stories.
Brooks acknowledges the addition of about 17,000 jobs from January to February. With numbers down again in March, he states it's hard to know which direction we're headed.
Brooks said that's one reason why economists like to look at longer trends of data and comparisons to other states to determine an accurate measure of job loss or growth.
"We ignore sort of little blips one month here one month there two months, we look at longer term trends and that's where we sort of do have some troubling data. Wisconsin has decreased the amount of employment in the last year, where as pretty much every other state in the nation has added employment. That's a troubling trend," said Brooks.
One reason for the increase in jobs in January and February, Brooks theorized, could be because of the unusually warm winter we had.
He said people might have just started jobs earlier than normal because the weather allowed. Minnesota experienced that warm weather as well and the state had stronger job growth than Wisconsin did.
