Different measuring sticks size this one up differently

In the view of the Scott Walker administration, the number of new businesses in Wisconsin is up more than 25,000 since he took office.

That figure easily surpasses the 10,000 new businesses Walker promised when he was running for the job in 2010.

The new-business promise was tied to his pledge of creating 250,000 new private-sector jobs by the end of 2014. (With those numbers so far behind that economists say the promise can't be met, we have moved that one to Promise Broken).

The new business picture has been different.

In May 2012 and October 2013, we rated the 10,000-business promise "In the Works" based largely on the measuring stick Walker had used -- data from the state Department of Financial Institutions that measures the total number of registered business entities in the state.

The number of registered entities has grown by 25,397 from before Walker's term through August 2014, the agency says.

Since then, we've learned a lot about the severe limitations of that measuring stick.

As we reported in May 2014, the count of newly registered entities that Walker touts includes not only new ventures that bring new jobs, but thousands with no workers on the payroll at all -- and little if any prospect of hires to come.

An analysis by PolitiFact Wisconsin found Walker's count includes:

-- Hundreds of nonprofit organizations, often volunteer-run, including Scout troops, condo associations, youth sports leagues, volunteer fire departments, historical societies, "friends" fundraising groups, scholarship funds and many more.

-- Thousands of limited-liability companies set up by real-estate investors solely to hold ownership of property or properties. Even investors as far away as Australia are on the list because they bought Wisconsin rental properties.

-- Out-of-state firms that registered in Wisconsin because they may want to do work here.

-- Startups that are just getting organized and not yet able to pay employees.

Certainly there are many job-producing startups on Walker's list.

But there is no way to know for sure how many of the new entities are producing jobs. We located no research on point, and the state does not ask newly registered business entities about their employment plans.

Business experts have told us the business registration figure cited by Walker is a general economic indicator. So it has some validity.

But as a specific indicator of job-producing businesses, it is weak.

Experts point to a second measure that, while not entirely on point to Walker's promise, still provides a more concrete look related to business formations.

It's based on federal employment surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that count the number of business "establishments" in Wisconsin every quarter. This is a closely related statistic, but "establishments" in the federal parlance are not single businesses. One company may consist of multiple establishment locations, such as stores, factories, mines, farms, etc.

Wisconsin had 6,657 more such "establishments" as of the first quarter of 2014 than in the last quarter of 2010 before Walker took office. That information is the most recent that is available.

Is that on pace to 10,000 new establishments?

No, we found. Based on the average monthly pace of net new establishments through March 2014, the state -- through December 2014 -- would be up 8,082 by the end of Walker's first term, we projected based on the federal data.

That's just a projection, of course, and it has the weakness of using preliminary data for the first quarter of 2014, the latest quarter available.

So we looked just at the first three years of the Walker term using no preliminary data. We got a similar result on the projection -- 8,207.

Either way, the current pace is too slow to get to 10,000.

But there's nine more months of data to go -- three quarters' worth -- on new "establishments," and we won't have it all until well after Walker's term ends.

An uptick in the coming months could quickly alter the projections here.

So we'll leave this at In the Works for now.