A ‘now hiring’ sign. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Employment in Wisconsin once again reached a new record in December, with a federal survey of households projecting that 3,076,000 people were working during the last month of 2024 — an increase of nearly 32,000 from December 2023, the state labor department reported Thursday.
The state’s unemployment rate for December, measuring people who aren’t working but are actively seeking work, ticked up slightly to 3% from November’s 2.9%, according to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD).
The unemployment rate is based on the household survey, which asks people if they’re working, actively seeking work and other related questions.
The same survey projects that 65.9% of Wisconsinites age 16 or older are working or looking for work — the labor force participation rate.
Compared with Wisconsin, for the U.S. as a whole labor force participation is lower (62.5%) and the unemployment rate is higher (4.1%), DWD reported — both continuing what has been a long-term trend.
From a separate federal survey of employers, there were a projected 3,042,100 nonfarm jobs in the state in December, also near a record. That’s an increase of 20,300 from December 2023, although a slight dip from November 2024.
In addition to being projections, all of the numbers and rates are seasonally adjusted, to smooth out increases or decreases that result from change-of-season fluctuations such as high tourism employment in the summer or high retail employment during the last couple months of the year.
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