One City School 1st Day 090122 12-09012022130444 (copy)

Third graders at One City School get acquainted with their new classroom and teacher on the first day of school. The state gained 8,000 jobs in August, a large portion of which were public school employees including custodians, kitchen workers and teachers. 

Wisconsin added 5,500 nonfarm jobs last month, led in large part by workers heading back to jobs in public schools across the state, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released Thursday by the state’s Department of Workforce Development (DWD). 

The state has added jobs in seven of the eight months in 2022, DWD chief labor market economist Dennis Winters told reporters in a monthly labor briefing. 

While the state lost 600 state government jobs and another 600 federal government jobs, it gained more than 10,000 local government jobs, including 8,000 in August alone, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly survey of employers. Many of these workers are public school employees, including custodians, kitchen workers and teachers. 

In Madison and across the country, teacher shortages made national headlines as the start of the new school year approached. The local district has blamed a shortage of kitchen staff for what some parents say are inadequate — largely packaged  school lunches

Construction is 'going great guns'

Construction and manufacturing, two industries that have seen some of the biggest job growth this year, gained 200 and 400 jobs respectively, for an increase of nearly 7,000 (in construction) and nearly 8,000 jobs (in manufacturing) over the last year.

“The construction sector is going great guns,” Winters said. 

That boom has been driven primarily by demand for new homes, he said. But with new federal funds headed to the state for infrastructure projects through the American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — including around $200 million in new funding for highway construction — Winters anticipates a spike in heavy construction too.

“With good wages and a lot of jobs, (people) are buying things, and those things have to be made, so we're gonna continue to see some good gains, some healthy manufacturing,” Winters said.

Retailers added 400 jobs, but Winters anticipates growth in that industry in the coming months. “People seem to be fairly flush with income … so hopefully the retail sector will perform pretty well through this holiday season,” he said. 

What’s less clear, he said, is whether that growth favors brick-and-mortar stores or online retailers. 

“Obviously we've seen a shift from retail employment more into warehousing and distribution, as people are not shopping at the mall, they’re shopping at home,” Winters said. “Retail is still down from the peak and I'm not sure if it'll ever really recover.”

That, he said, could push some salespeople into other lines of work, such as manufacturing, wholesale or health care.

Hospitality numbers down

The number of nonfarm jobs in the private sector shrank by 2,800 over the month, though it’s still up more than 40,000 over the year. Wisconsin’s leisure and hospitality industry, which gained more than 11,000 jobs over the last year, lost 3,000 last month. The state’s information industry, which includes businesses ranging from publishing and film to telecommunications and data, lost 1,200 jobs. 

Despite the growth in jobs, Wisconsin's unemployment rate rose from 3% last month to 3.1% in August, with nearly 3,000 more Wisconsinites estimated to be out of work and looking for work than was the case last month, according to data from a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of households. The state's rate remains lower than that U.S. unemployment rate, which was estimated at 3.7% for August.

Winters anticipates the unemployment rate will remain near record lows for the foreseeable future. “We're still seeing employers clamoring for jobs, and jobs keep increasing, so that should continue to be the situation going forward.”

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