Seasonally unadjusted unemployment rates are given in Table 2.  Portage and Wood County First Quarter unemployment rates fell from a year ago.  Portage and Wood registered unemployment rates of 4.0 percent and 5.0 percent respectively.  However, Marathon County and the U.S. experienced an increase in their respective unemployment rates.  Marathon came in at 5.0 percent this year as compared to 4.3 percent last year.  The U.S. registered a rate of 4.3 percent compared to 4.2 in 1999.

     Excellent news comes from the employment figures in Table 3.  Portage county total employment rose by an estimated 6.8 percent from last year.  Likewise, Marathon and Wood expanded by 7.5 percent and 5.0 percent, respectively, since First Quarter 1999.  For Central Wisconsin, total employment rose from 137 thousand to 147 thousand over the past twelve months.  The employment growth has not been isolated to our area.  Wisconsin's total employment surged forward by 5.2 percent over the period.  The U.S., however, experienced a much slower pace of growth expanding by just 1.1 percent.

     More good news can be reported in Table 4.  Every industrial sector in Central Wisconsin experienced employment growth.  Manufacturing and services expanded by 200 and 1,900 people, respectively.  Trade, construction, and government expanded by 900, 100 and 1,200 positions since last year.  Overall, industrial sector employment rose by almost 4.0 percent.

     County sales tax distribution numbers in Table 5 are inaccurate and should be ignored.  The state of Wisconsin is experiencing data processing problems.  This problem is not confined to our area but encompasses the entire state sales tax distribution system.  Hopefully by next quarter the problem will be resolved and the data will once again accurately reflect retail sales activity.

     The Figure 5A and Figure 5B are presented in order to give the reader a historic overview as to how the manufacturing, services, trade, construction and government sectors have fared over the past five years.  The figures also give the reader some sense as to the magnitude of change and the relative importance of each sector.

     The business confidence survey for Central Wisconsin in Table 6 shows that area business executives feel that the fundamentals for national and local economies have not changed that much.  Given the economic health of the nation, the results are not surprising.  When this group was asked about the future direction of the national and local economies there was some sense that economic matters would have to slow down in the future.  That is, this rapid rate of expansion can not continue indefinitely.  Interestingly enough, this group is convinced that their particular industry still has room to grow.