What is the current unemployment rate of WI?
The current unemployment rate for the state of Wisconsin has reached a 27-year high of 9.4 percent. It has topped out at 10.9 percent in 1982.It’s official: This recession is the worst in a generation in Wisconsin. The state’s unemployment rate rose to 9.4% in March, the Department of Workforce Development reported Thursday. March unemployment skipped past February’s 8.8%, and surpassed the national rate for the first time since June 2007. The U.S. unemployment rate was 9% in March. Wisconsin lost a total of 8,700 non-farm jobs last month and has shed more than 112,000 jobs since March 2008. Recession-watchers have to look back to 1982 to find unemployment rates higher than those released Thursday. Wisconsin’s unemployment topped out at 10.9% that year. The trajectory of today’s recession is what most concerns Russ Kashian, associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The decline in the past several months has been much steeper than in the 1980s, he said.
