Wisconsin’s Walker predicts more jobs

Gov. Scott Walker began the day after his re-call election win with a stop at a factory in Oak Creek. There, he predicted creating what he called an “unbelievable” amount of jobs, now that uncertainty over state policy was settled with his win.

The governor says the recall cast a pall over small business owners who didn’t know how the outcome may or may not have affected their companies.

Now Scott Walker says his decisive win will let businesses know his ‘reforms will continue,’ “As I heard from small business owners from one end of the state to the other that now they know it’s going to continue, they know we’re going to go forward and that means I think we’re going to see people add an unbelievable number of jobs over the next couple of weeks, next couple of months, and certainly over the next six months.”

In an initial campaign promise Walker pledged to create 250,000 jobs in four years.

The Associate Director of UW-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy calls that a “reasonable” number. But Laura Dresser–who is also a labor economist–says the governor has a lot of catching up to do, “I don’t know what an ‘unbelievable’ number is but I do know what we need. Just to get back to where we were in December of 2007 we need 150,000 jobs and to make up for population growth is 75,000 jobs.”

Dresser says Wisconsin added about 24,000 jobs last year. She says that number is “weak” even compared with the national job recovery.