Wisconsin Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, was re-elected earlier this month to represent the 10th Senate District, beating Democratic opponent Diane Odeen. On her campaign website, Harsdorf claimed that “Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has been cut by more than half and is consistently lower than the national average.”
The Observatory checked whether Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has been cut by more than 50 percent, and whether the Wisconsin unemployment rate has been consistently lower than the national average.
In order to check the first part of the claim, we asked Harsdorf’s campaign staff how they arrived at the the estimated reduction in the unemployment rate. They pointed to the difference in unemployment between January 2010 and today. According to Harsdorf’s team, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was 9.2 percent in January 2010, compared to the current unemployment rate of 4.2 percent.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed these figures. According to the bureau, the unemployment rate for Wisconsin in August 2016 was 4.2 percent. The most recent statistic is for September 2016, at which point the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent. However, because the bureau has labeled this as a preliminary estimate for September, we used the same unemployment rate from August that Harsdorf’s campaign used.
Now for the calculations. Fifty percent of 9.2 percent, the unemployment rate for 2010, is 4.6 percent. The August unemployment rate of 4.2 percent is clearly below that.
This means that from January 2010 up to August 2016, there has been a 54.35 percent reduction in Wisconsin’s unemployment rate. Because the most recent unemployment rate was actually 4.1 percent, Harsdorf’s claim is still true.
Harsdorf’s campaign staff said in an email that they updated the website and added this claim around late June or early July of this year. Since the unemployment rate was 4.2 percent at this time, Harsdorf’s claim that the unemployment rate had been cut by more than half is verified.
The Observatory also checked the second part of Harsdorf’s claim, that the Wisconsin unemployment rate is consistently lower than the national average. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the Wisconsin unemployment rate has been below the national unemployment rate as far back as 1990 (except for a brief period around 2006-07). Since there is only one brief period where the Wisconsin unemployment rate is at or below the national average, it is safe to say that Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is “consistently” lower than the national average, so Harsdorf’s claim is verified.
This chart shows the unemployment data of Wisconsin and the national average side by side:
Unemployment rate as of January of listed year:
*Wisconsin’s unemployment rate in January was higher than this summer, when Harsdorf’s campaign made its verified claim of a 4.2 percent unemployment rate
Sources:
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Local Area Unemployment Statistics: Wisconsin. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LASST550000000000004?data_tool=XGtable.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000.
Friends of Sheila Harsdorf email, Oct. 13, 2016.
Google Public Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment in the U.S.
Sheila Harsdorf website, http://www.harsdorf.com
Graphics sources:
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Local Area Unemployment Statistics: Wisconsin. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LASST550000000000004?data_tool=XGtable.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment Rates for States. http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm.
Harsdorf, Sheila. Getting things done. Harsdorf.com. http://www.harsdorf.com