Never claimed to be a cutting edge Intertubes guy, but just found a Wisconsin lefty blog that it's somehow taken two years to stumble across:
Political Heatoperated by Chris Walker, who offers this take on the Walker (no relation) administration's attempt to spin the June unemployment numbers:
The wild market fluctuations during the debt ceiling negotiations, the European debt crisis and other factors contributed to a great deal of uncertainty, which may very well have affected Wisconsin’s jobs numbers given our state’s ties to the national economy,” DWD Secretary Scott Baumbach said in a written statement released Thursday.
Except the jobless rate across the country actually went down, not up, in July, from 9.2 percent to 9.1 percent. The uncertainty of the debt ceiling didn't occur until late July, hardly affecting that month's employment outlook. And those "market fluctuations" that really did a number on Wisconsin in July didn't even start happening until after the month was over!
In fact, between July 1 and August 1, the Dow Jones Industrial fluctuated very little. It started the month at 12,582 points, reached a peak of 12,724, and ended at its lowest point of 12,143. As of today, it sits at 10,990.