November 26, 2013
[Madison, Wisc…] Wisconsin’s labor market relies heavily on the private sector, especially when compared to other states, according to a new report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.States with more public sector jobs and federal contract-funded jobs have much smaller real private sector labor markets. This leads to a much higher reliance on government-funded positions.
Wisconsin, however, ranks fifth in the nation for real private sector jobs as a percentage of total jobs in the state. This means that most jobs in Wisconsin are created in the private sector and do not rely on government funding.
According to the study, 84.1 percent of the labor market in Wisconsin is created by real private sector jobs. Any job that is in the public sector or relies on a federal government contract is not included in that percentage.
The national average for real private sector jobs is 80.8 percent of a state’s labor market. Rhode Island ranks highest in the nation with 85.7 percent and New Mexico ranks at the bottom with 68.1 percent.
Wisconsin also does well when it comes to the percentage of federal contract-funded private sector jobs. The Badger State’s labor market has 1.2 percent of jobs that fall into this category, ranking it 11th lowest in the nation.
Virginia has the highest amount of federal contract-funded jobs at 10.7 percent of their labor market, while Oregon has the lowest at 0.7 percent. The national average is 2.7 percent.
The report was released from Mercatus on Monday and the full version is available here.