Wisconsin’s unemployment rate dropped from 8.6% in June to 7% in July, far below the national rate of 10.2%.
Wisconsin added 25,000 private-sector jobs in July, the state Department of Workforce Development reported Thursday.
Wisconsin’s unemployment rate typically trends closely with the national rate. But there’s a bigger gap in recent months because the state has less of a concentration of jobs in sectors that were hardest hit by the pandemic, the state’s chief economist, Dennis Winters, said last month. For example, manufacturing and construction jobs in Wisconsin were less affected, helping to reduce the number of unemployed, he said.