Final Scott Walker jobs tally shows 250,000 first-term promise far from met

The final report is in on Gov. Scott Walker’s first-term promise to create 250,000 jobs. He fell short by about half of the promised amount.

Throughout his successful 2010 campaign for governor, Walker repeated in speeches and campaign ads the promise that private-sector employers would add 250,000 jobs in his first four years. Since he took office in January 2011, PolitiFact Wisconsin tracked the monthly job tally.

For our tally, we used the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which surveys nearly all state businesses, to get annual figures. We combined that with monthly survey data — which comes from reports gathered from a small percentage of state businesses — to provide the most up-to-date picture for where things stand.

We rated the promise as Promise Broken in September 2014, when our count showed that employers had added an estimated 146,795 jobs — about 59 percent of the promised total. Experts said it was mathematically impossible to close the gap in the remaining months of the year.

They were right.

On May 21, 2015, the state released the full year QCEW report for 2014. It said employers created 35,736 jobs in 2014.

Combined with the three previous years, that brought the total to 127,549 jobs for Walker’s first four year term. That’s slightly more than half of his original promise.