some data like President Biden's visit (CNN):
Macro indicators:
figure 1: Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment (dark blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark measure of nonfarm payrolls (pink), civilian employment (tan), linear interpolation of real wages and salaries, by state chain consumer price index ( Sky blue), GDP (red), and consistent index deflation (green), all 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.
Most indicators were rising as of the latest available data. Civilian employment is the only employment to show a sideways trend; however, this difference also occurs at the country level and is likely mainly attributable to underestimation of the population.
Wisconsin's unemployment rate is about 0.8 percentage points lower than the national rate.
figure 2: Unemployment rates in Wisconsin (blue) and the United States (black), both as percentages. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This is about the same average percentage difference one finds, so one can infer that Wisconsin is doing the same thing as the nation as a whole (from a cyclical perspective).
Real wages are now higher than the NBER's February 2020 peak.
image 3: Average hourly earnings in Wisconsin in 2023 (blue) $ (tan). Use chained CPI for deflation. The NBER defines the peak to trough dates of U.S. recessions (shaded in gray).
Deflation is achieved through chained CPI. Real wages remain above peak levels as measured by the NBER's official Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Finally, the CNN article noted concerns about inflation. While we do not have inflation data for Wisconsin, we do have data for the Northeast-Central subregion, which includes Wisconsin.
Figure 4: Cumulative CPI gains since January 2021 for the Northeast-Central United States (blue) and the United States (black). The authors used X-13 to perform seasonal adjustments for the north-eastern part of the country. Use logs for calculations. Source: BLS and author's calculations.
The cumulative inflation rate in the North East region is roughly the same as the overall national inflation rate (although as mentioned above) elsewhereEast China, North China, and Central China, food inflation is slightly higher than overall).
Finally, at higher frequencies, Baumeister, Leiva-Leon and Sims weekly economic conditions indicators (ECI) showed that Wisconsin grew 1 percentage point faster than trend for the week ended April 27, 2024, while the U.S. overall grew 0.29 percentage points slower than trend.
