With Wisconsin closing in on 11,000 mass layoff notices for 2015, many have asked why Scott Walker’s pet-project/slushfund Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) hasn’t taken more proactive action to stop the bleeding, particularly at Oscar Mayer.
These are good questions to be asking, and of course they come on top of a seemingly endless stream of dysfunction (why, hello, CFO #6), favoritism, contempt for state statutes, and likely criminal activities that have lead to even some Republicans taking shots at WEDC.
But this got me thinking along a different angle… What if WEDC wasn’t here to boldlyTM and flexiblyTM “impact” all those jobs they talk about? Could we perhaps be looking at 30,000 or 40,000 layoffs? And, then, how does WEDC’s impact on job growth compare to all the other “big, bold reforms” that Walker and friends have put into action? To the numbers!
Fiscal Yr |
Jobs “Impacted” |
$ Awarded |
WEDC "Jobs Impacted" by Fiscal Yr (July-June)
2011/12 |
23,759
|
$501.4M |
2012/13 |
37,313 |
$330.2M |
2013/14 |
32,689 |
$156.8M |
2014/15 |
26,822 |
$245.7M |
Totals: |
120,583 |
$1,234.1M |
(WEDC data are only available from July 2011 to June 2015.)
There are 2 metrics we can use to measure net change in employment over this 4 yr period:
-
WI Total Employment (place of residence): +101,765 people employed
-
WI Private Sector Jobs (place of work): +124,400 jobs
In either case, WEDC’s claimed “jobs impacted” accounts for essentially all net job growth in WI.
A couple ways to visualize this (assuming WEDC jobs impacted annual figures are spread evenly through each yr):
The significance of all this, of course, lies in the fact that WEDC is far from the only thing Walker & Co. have done in the name of creating jobs. There have been tax cuts, nullification of local regulations/zoning, weakening of environmental (and other) regulations, drastic reductions in enforcement actions, more tax cuts, Right To Work (for less), gutting state Equal Pay laws, not acting on the minimum wage, those not-tacky-at-all “Open for Business” signs, and on and on.
With four years of data showing that net job growth has been roughly equal to WEDC’s claimed impact on jobs, the Walker/WMC crowd are painted into a corner.
They have two choices:
A) Defend WEDC, and concede that the rest of Walker’s economic agenda has had essentially zero positive impact on job growth.
Or…
B) Defend Walker’s broader economic agenda, and concede that, among its 9,000 other problems, WEDC has been wildly overstating its impact.
They can’t have it both ways, and Democrats need to call them out on this.
Footnote: Defenders of WEDC will no doubt point out that their “jobs impacted” metrics are forward-looking, and as such shouldn’t be compared directly to jobs numbers in the same timeframe as I have done here. However, 70% of WEDC’s “jobs impacted” have been for “jobs retained.” Implicit in awarding an incentive for retaining jobs is that, absent the incentive, these jobs are at imminent risk of layoffs. Therefore, these can reasonably be assumed to have had an immediate impact on the monthly jobs numbers.
The other 30% are for “job creation,” which can occur 3 to 5 yrs out in the future. However, awards made in the first 2 yrs of WEDC should be well on their way towards realizing their job creation goals. Further, WEDC has repeatedly handed out “job creation” awards and allowed employers to claim credit for jobs already created years in the past. The recent Johnson Controls story is one such example; see also pg. 46-47 of the 2015 LAB Audit.
In light of this, I think it would be more than fair to remove “job creation” numbers from the last two years, reducing WEDC’s claimed impact to 102,406 jobs. Even using this reduced figure, WEDC still accounts for either 82% or 101% of net job growth (using Private Sector Jobs and Total Employment, respectively), and the points made above still stand up.