Wisconsin Unemployment
The U.S. unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent in February, above the most recently reported Wisconsin jobless rate, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday.
About 36,000 jobs were cut nationwide on the month, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
Employment fell in construction and information, while temporary help services added jobs, the BLS reported.
Some analysts had expected a greater job loss and a higher unemployment rate, given February’s snowstorms in the East.
But BLS said it was “not possible to quantify precisely the net impact of the winter storms,” suggesting it may adjust its figures later.
Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist with Capital Economics in Toronto, called the job-loss figure “an encouraging number, and employment is now very close to stabilizing.”
However, Ashworth said, “it could be six months or more before we really begin to see substantial and sustained job growth.”
John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., said the Chicago outplacement company’s own tracking of planned U.S. job cuts in February “showed the fewest planned layoff announcements since 2006. This is a strong indication that employers are turning from a downsizing strategy to one focused on workforce stabilization and eventually job creation.”
But he also said it could be “six months or more before we really begin to see substantial and sustained job growth.”
Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was 8.3 percent in December, the most recent month for which data have been released. The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development won’t release labor market information for January until March 10. February data will be released March 24.
Click here to download the full BLS unemployment report.
And click here to download an analysis of unemployment data by Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Keith Hall.
The Denver Business Journal is a sister publication of The Business Journal Serving Greater Milwaukee.
copied from:
…
[...] Wisconsin Unemployment | The US unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent in February, above the most recently reported Wisconsin jobless rate, the US Labor Department said.Tags: Wisconsin Unemployment , Wisconsin Unemployment Claim, Wisconsin Unemployment Insurance, Wisconsin Unemployment Weekly Claim, Read MoreWisconsin Unemployment » WI Unemployment, wisconsin unemployment …. [...]