Clearing Up The Job Picture

Is the Chippewa Valley’s unemployment rate good or bad? Some of both.

Tom Giffey

There’s an old joke that a recession is when my neighbor loses his job and a depression is when I lose my job. By that measure, things were pretty depressing for a lot of us in the Chippewa Valley – and nationwide – about four years ago. And they’ve gotten less depressing in the intervening years as the Great Recession has receded along with the unemployment rate.

But anyone who’s spent time tuned into financial news knows that economic information is as voluminous as it is contradictory. As in the old adage, our assessment of the economy has as much to be with reality as it does with our impression of reality – or at least the slice of reality we manage to digest via the overwhelming buffet of data we get from the news.

So what does the job picture look like, really?

“Even though the unemployment rate may have ticked up slightly, it’s more encouraging to me to see the labor force rebounding.” – Scott Hodek, Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development

The short answer – here in the Chippewa Valley, circa the summer of 2013 – is not bad. Not amazingly good, either, but not bad. More specifically, the latest unemployment rate for the Eau Claire metropolitan area (Eau Claire and Chippewa counties) was 5.9 percent.

The “not bad” part: The Valley’s May rate (that’s the latest state available) is better than the metro area’s figure for April (6.6 percent). It’s better than the statewide rate of 6.7 percent. It’s better than the national rate of 7.6 percent. And it’s way better than the rate during the worst part of the recession’s aftershock, when 9.1 percent of the Chippewa Valley workforce was unemployed in February 2010. The bottom line: If you’re interested in exchanging your time and talent for a paycheck, you’ve got a better chance than you did a few years ago and a better chance today than you do in the state and nation as a whole.

Why does the Chippewa Valley unemployment rate always beat the state and national averages? “It’s a tough question,” acknowledges Scott Hodek, an Eau Claire-based economist with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. Part of it has to do with the more diverse mix of employers you find in a metro area like Eau Claire. (It’s no surprise that rural counties – Menominee, Iron, Sawyer, Rusk – have far higher jobless rates than more populous ones.) Part of it also has to do with the particular industry mix we have in the Valley. “We’ve got a lot of education and health care, and those tend to be fairly stable,” Hodek said. Likewise, in recent years manufacturing – another major local industry – has been on an upward swing.

Now, the “not good” part about the local jobs scene: The unemployment rate is actually a bit higher than it was a year ago (5.8 percent in May 2012). And it’s still quite a bit higher than it was before the Great Recession began – which, according to economists, was December 2007. That month, the jobless rate in the Valley was just 4 percent (although, to be fair, the numbers aren’t adjusted for seasonal fluctuations, and a lot of people get temporary jobs around the holidays). Furthermore, the current rate is higher than the rate in almost every single month in the five years before the recession, when unemployment was typically between 4 and 5 percent (and sometimes lower). In other words, all the pundits are right when they say the recovery has been lackluster.

Of course, the unemployment rate only tells part of the story. Hodek, the economist, points out that the number of people in the labor force is actually growing. “Even though the unemployment rate may have ticked up slightly, it’s more encouraging to me to see the labor force rebounding,” Hodek said. Specifically, 768 more people either had jobs or were looking for them in the Eau Claire metro area in May than were doing so the year before. The same figure grew between 2011 and 2012, too.

But, you ask, how can unemployment be higher if the labor force is growing? That question strikes to the heart of what unemployment numbers tell – and don’t tell – us. When dispirited job-seekers stop looking for jobs, they fall out of the labor force and no longer count when unemployment rates are calculated. If enough people do this, the unemployment rate actually can go down – even though fewer people are bringing home the proverbial bacon. In short, what seems like a good thing (a lower unemployment rate) actually can be a bad thing. On the flip side, if more people get out of the house (or, more often, get out of the school and into the workforce) and start looking for work, the labor force grows and the unemployment rate can actually rise. In fact, this happens each June as college grads pack away their mortarboards and start mailing out résumés. For these newly minted degree holders, prospects are brighter than they were a few years ago.

Where the Jobs Are is sponsored by:

Chippewa Valley
Technical College

620 W. Clairemont Ave
Eau Claire, WI

Where the Jobs Are is sponsored by:

Chippewa Valley
Technical College

620 W. Clairemont Ave
Eau Claire, WI