BY ROBERT CLOUD

COUNTY POST WEST EDITOR

WAUPACA – The unemployment rate in Waupaca County jumped to 9.2 percent in December 2009.

The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) released the county breakdown of the most recent jobless figures last week. All but three of the state’s 72 counties saw an increase in the number of people looking for work.

Waupaca County’s unemployment rate was 8.7 percent in November 2009 and 6.7 percent in December 2008.

That 0.5 percent increase in the jobless rate translates into 238 people who lost their jobs between November and December.

A review of Waupaca County’s unemployment data over the past year reveals a disturbing trend. Local workers began losing their jobs in significant numbers in the fall of 2008, when unemployment rose from 4.3 percent in September to 6.8 percent in December.

The county’s jobless rate peaked at 11.9 percent in March 2009, then started an unsteady and slow descent to 8.2 percent in September 2009. Over the past two months, that number has increased.

Waupaca County’s total workforce was 27,357 in December 2009, according to DWD figures. Of that workforce, 2,513 people were jobless in December, an increase by 522 over the prior December.

Furthermore, the number of people counted in Waupaca County’s workforce dropped by 391 in 2009.

Jeffrey Sachse is a labor market analyst with the DWD for northeast Wisconsin. He attributed the dwindling numbers in the county’s workforce to a number of factors.

“Part of those 400 or so people are either working in positions that are less than part-time, such as contract work, or they have exhausted their benefits and have not re-applied, so they would not have been picked up in the count,” Sachse said.

Sachse noted that older workers have been hit harder in the current recession than they were in previous economic downturns.

“Some of those workers chose to retire early, either by choice or by necessity,” Sachse said. “Early retirees probably account for a better share of those numbers.”

Sachse said December’s unemployment numbers also reflect the usual drop in seasonal employment.

“This is something we see every year at about this time,” Sachse said. “Manufacturers plan holiday shut downs and there’s a drop in seasonal employment, especially construction.”

In the past, there has been an increase in retail employment due to the holiday shopping season, but not in 2009.

“Retailers did not expect a big bump in sales, so they did not bring on as many employees as they normally would,” Sachse said.

Laura Dresser, a labor economist with the Center for Wisconsin Strategies in Madison, said the state’s employment trends over the past two years may indicate long-term problems for the economy.

She pointed to the fact that Wisconsin, like Waupaca County, has seen its total workforce decline significantly over the past two years. There are 176,700 fewer jobs in Wisconsin in December 2009 than there were in December 2007.

“We have 6 percent fewer jobs in the Wisconsin economy today than we did two years ago. That’s why it is so significant to see additional job losses in recent months,” Dresser said.

In December 2007, there were an estimated 2.89 million jobs in Wisconsin and unemployment was at 4.5 percent. Two years later, the state’s total number of jobs had dropped to 2.71 million and unemployment was 8.7 percent.

“This recession began in December 2007. The most brutal time of this recession was basically in September 2008 through March 2009,” Dresser said.

She observed that April through August was a good news period for Wisconsin’s economy.

“We weren’t gaining jobs, but we weren’t losing jobs either,” she said.

Over the past four months, however, Wisconsin has shed more than 40,000 jobs. Dresser said most of the state’s job losses have occurred in manufacturing and construction. Over the past two years, Wisconsin has lost 63,200 manufacturing jobs and 24,700 construction jobs.

“We’ve lost 20 percent of the construction job base,” Dresser said. “That’s a lot of people who are out of work and having a hard time finding work.”

Dresser said Wisconsin’s economy has fewer jobs today than it did a decade ago. In July 2000, there were 2.85 million jobs in the state. The 2001 recession hit Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector especially hard and the resumption of job growth in 2003-04 was slower than it had been in the 1990s.

“Economists started calling it the jobless recovery,” Dresser said. “I’m worried that what we have now may be a job-loss recovery.”

Both Dresser and Sachse believe Wisconsin’s jobless figures will probably continue to rise in January and February.

Sachse said that an increase in the unemployment rate in January will probably be due to normal seasonal job losses. He also noted that employment gains usually lag six to nine months behind a recovery.

“If we pulled out of the recession in the fall of last year, we probably won’t see employment gains until the late spring or into the summer,” Sachse said.

Dresser said job loss in this recession has far outpaced prior recessions. She pointed to the economic downturns that started in 1981, 1990 and 2001. Within 24 months after those earlier recessions began, job numbers had either stopped dropping or started increasing.

For example, in Wisconsin, there were nearly 3 percent more jobs 24 months after 1990 recession began than there had been before it began.

Two years since the current recession began in December 2007, there are now more than 6 percent fewer jobs in Wisconsin.

“We aren’t generating jobs yet,” Dresser said.

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