7/22/11 – Wisconsin added almost 13-thousand private sector jobs in June – the most for any one-month period since September of 2003. Despite a drop in government jobs, Governor Scott Walker says the Badger State still had a net increase of 95-hundred jobs last month – accounting for more than half the new jobs created in the entire nation. And Walker says 39-thousand private sector jobs have been added since the start of the year – which puts him well on his way toward keeping his campaign promise to create a quarter-million private sector jobs by 2015. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate did rise two-tenths of a percent to seven-point-six. Walker’s labor chief, Scott Baumbach, said it was due to more job-seekers entering the workforce with optimism for finding something. Wisconsin’s jobless rate has stayed about one-and-a-half percent below the national rate of nine-percent-plus. Meanwhile, more storm clouds might be brewing on the national labor front. The Labor Department says that applications for jobless benefits rose last week – which was seen as evidence of a weak job market and more layoffs.
