Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI MSA · October 2026
Every advertised-pay, job-posting and industry figure in this briefing comes from WageScape's own database of active job postings. The sources below back the external facts cited in the written analysis.
Sources cited in this report
Key Indicators
Milwaukee MSA unemployment rate at 3.1% (Dec 2025, not seasonally adjusted)
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Local Area Unemployment Statistics
This Month's Takeaways
Wisconsin Black unemployment rate at 7.2% in Q1 2026 vs 2.3% white rate
State of Working Wisconsin / COWS — Q1 2026 labor force demographic breakdown
Local Economic Conditions
Milwaukee MSA employment declines year-over-year since April 2025
Bureau of Labor Statistics / Wisconsin DWD — Local Area Unemployment Statistics, metro payroll trend
Construction employment up 9.6% year-over-year, ~3,400 jobs added
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development — Metro-level industry employment estimates
Looking Ahead
National wage growth fell to 3.0% annual increase, lowest since May 2021
Bureau of Labor Statistics — September 2026 employment situation report
Wisconsin filed 56 WARN notices in 2026 affecting 3,914 workers
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development — 2026 WARN Act notice tracking
How the numbers are calculated
- Advertised pay is the median of the pay ranges employers publish in active job postings in this metro. It is not survey or payroll data.
- Percent changes compare the latest six full months with the six months before that, for the same metro and sector.
- Sectors group postings by the employer's industry (NAICS) classification into ten sectors. Where a metro has too few postings in a sector, the state figure is used instead.
- Role pay trends use the same comparison windows. "Stable" means a change of less than 3%; "moderate" 3–10%; "significant" more than 10%.
Official data for comparison