republican party Think so.
“From recession to cheering for DEI, Gov. Tony Evers has dragged Wisconsin down during his tenure. …”
if someone takes NBER's definition of recession, then the evaluation of WisGOP is closed. From the National Bureau of Economic Research:
The National Bureau of Economic Research's definition emphasizes that a recession involves a significant decline in economic activity across the entire economy that lasts for more than several months. In our interpretation of this definition, we treat the three criteria of depth, spread, and duration as interchangeable. That is, while each criterion needs to be met individually to some extent, the extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset the weaker indications of another criterion. …
Because a recession must have a broad impact on the economy and not be limited to one sector, the committee emphasizes an economy-wide measure of economic activity. Peak and trough months are determined based on a series of monthly aggregate indicators of real economic activity published by the federal statistics agency. These include real personal income less transfer payments, nonfarm employment, employment measured by household surveys, real personal consumption expenditures, wholesale and retail sales adjusted for price changes, and industrial production. There are no set rules about which measures inform the process or how to weigh them in our decisions. In recent decades, the two indicators we have focused most on are real personal income minus transfers and nonfarm employment. [emphasis added – MDC]
Here are some numbers from Wisconsin.
figure 1: Wisconsin nonfarm payrolls (dark blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark measure of nonfarm payrolls (pink), civilian employment (tan), real wages and salaries, by the National Chain Consumer Price Index (sky blue) ), GDP (red), synchronization index (green) for deflation), all recorded in the log 2021M11=0.Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bank of East Asia, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia [1], [2]and the author's calculations.
NFP continues to rise, as does the Philadelphia Fed's NFP adjustment based on QCEW data. Real wages and salaries, which represent personal income, increased in 2023.
I think WisGOP has been keeping an eye on GDP and noted three consecutive quarters of negative growth (although Q3 was barely down at -0.03%, compared to a 1.2% sequential increase in the last reported quarter and a 5% annualized rate). However, the NBER BCDC does not rely on GDP reported on a quarterly basis in the first place, in part because GDP is sometimes subject to substantial revisions.This is discussed in relation to U.S. GDP hereand the revision of Wisconsin GDP is shown in Figure 2.
figure 2: Wisconsin GDP, Year 11/14/2018 (Black), Year 6/25/2021 (Blue), Year 10/01/2021 (Green), Year 6/30/2023 (Red), Millions Ch.2023 $, SAAR. NBER-defined recession dates are shaded gray. Source: BEA, via ALFRED, NBER.
