Scott Walker’s flagship jobs agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, released its annual report last week, which shows that the scandal-plagued agency continues to fall short on job creation.
Despite spending $330 million on economic development initiatives, WEDC reports that their efforts fell well short of their goal of 50,000 jobs impacted. WEDC also reports that they have lowered their jobs impacted goal for Fiscal Year 2014 to just 20,825 jobs.
The WEDC report comes just days after the latest, most accurate federal jobs numbers available show that Wisconsin created only 23,963 new jobs over the past year — the worst numbers for a one-year period in the state over the past three years — dropping the state to 37th in the nation in job growth over the past year.
The Walker Administration desperately tries to spin the latest headlines, but the bad news shows Scott Walker’s Tea Party experiments aren’t working.
Scott Walker’s central campaign promise was to create 250,000 jobs by January 2015, a figure his own administration concedes they will not reach. Walker again promised “unbelievable amounts of jobs” after the recall elections — which he blamed for then-sluggish growth.
More than a year after the recall, Wisconsin continues to lose out on job growth opportunities and bad jobs news has become all too common. It’s working-class families that feel the pain of Walker’s failure; as job growth plummets, the Badger State also leads the nation in new jobless claims.
“Scott Walker’s flagship jobs agency was supposed to serve as the driver of Wisconsin’s business climate and it is — unfortunately, it’s driving our state’s economy down, not up,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Thursday. “WEDC is falling short on their jobs goals and lowering future goals by more than fifty percent, all while Wisconsin plummets in job growth rankings. Wisconsin families deserve better than continued excuses for failure and a complete lack of accountability.”
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