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stated on January 23, 2024 in Speech:

“In April last year, our state unemployment rate hit a record low of 2.4%. Last year, Wisconsin had an all-time lowest number of unemployed workers ever in modern history.”

A roadside banner beckons potential employees outside Channel Control Merchants LLC, an extreme value retailer and exporter of brand sensitive secondary market inventories, in Hattiesburg, Miss., March 27, 2021. (AP)

By Sophia Voight February 2, 2024

Is Gov. Tony Evers right that Wisconsin’s unemployment rate hit an all-time low last year?

If Your Time is short

Wisconsin hit its lowest unemployment rate of 2.4% in April 2023.
That is the lowest unemployment rate from available U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data dating back to 1976.
April’s low rate beat the previous record of 2.5% which was set just a month prior in March 2023.

See the sources for this fact-check

In his annual State of the State address, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers boasted of record low unemployment rates in Wisconsin last year.

"In April last year, our state unemployment rate hit a record-low of 2.4%," Evers said during his Jan. 23 address. "Last year, Wisconsin had an all-time lowest number of unemployed workers ever in modern history."

Often, when rating these sorts of claims, speakers credit themselves with making the difference, and that lowers the rating, since there are many things that drive the economy at the state, national and worldwide level. In this case, Evers stated it generally as a fact, so we will evaluate it with that in mind.

Evers is correct that last year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wisconsin had a 2.4% unemployment rate for April and May.

But, was there ever a time in history when it was even lower?

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Let’s do some digging.

Wisconsin’s unemployment data

BLS has available data on Wisconsin’s labor force dating back to January 1976.

Following a record-high unemployment rate of 14.1% at the start of the pandemic in April 2020, Wisconsin has been on a steady decline in the percentage of the labor force without a job.

The state hit its lowest unemployment rate of 2.4% in April 2023.

April’s record low beat Wisconsin’s previous lowest unemployment rate of 2.5% from just the month prior. And before the pandemic, Wisconsin’s lowest unemployment rate on record was 2.9% in March 2020.

Wisconsin’s low ranking undercut the national unemployment figures which were 3.4% for April.

Since then, the state’s unemployment has gone slightly up and now stands at 3.3%.

Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development’s Communications Director John Dipko confirmed with PolitiFact that 2.4% is the lowest unemployment rate for Wisconsin on record.

Rebecca Kleefisch

stated on December 18, 2011 in an interview

Wisconsin’s monthly job reports have a "margin of error" of 75 percent and were "way off" in eight of first 10 months of 2011.

Unemployment rates are one of the most common figures economists use to capture the health of the labor market.

The rate measures the proportion of workers in the labor force who do not currently have a job but are actively looking for work. People who have not looked for work in the past four weeks are not included.

In a Department of Workforce Development report from April, Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek attributed some of the low unemployment to the increase in jobs across the state following the pandemic.

The report stated Wisconsin added 51,500 total nonfarm jobs from April 2022 to April 2023, totaling a record-high 3,003,600 jobs across the state.

Our ruling

Evers said Wisconsin had the "lowest number of unemployed workers ever in modern history" of 2.4% last April.

According to available Bureau of Labor Statistics data dating to 1976, Evers is correct that 2.4% is the lowest unemployment rate Wisconsin has had.

We rate Evers’ claim True.