Similar to the Central Wisconsin region as a whole, the Wisconsin Rapids area has experienced a year of economic growth. However, signs of a slowing economy are also evident in the local indicators. This section of the report focuses on the Wisconsin Rapids area economy. Information on local labor markets, construction activity and financial markets is contained in Tables 7-13.

     Strong gains in the trade sector more than offset mild declines in construction and government employment in Wood County during the first quarter (Table 7). Manu­facturing jobs remain even with the year earlier level, while employment in service industries rose 2.4%. The economic expansion has been paced by the trade and service sectors in the local economy. Manufacturing employment in the Wisconsin Rapids area is not strongly influenced by economic fluctuations because of the highly stable paper industry.

     At the bottom of Table 7, the Wisconsin Rapids employment index shows a 4.0% increase over the March 1984 reading. The index uses the 1980 Census of the Population to extrapolate local employment. Assuming that the structure of the local economy remains relatively stable, the Census figures can be combined with monthly Wood County labor statistics to provide a local employment index. For example, the importance of the paper industry is accounted for in this manner.

     Table 8 measures the volume of help wanted advertising in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune. Help wanted advertising declined slightly from the March 1984 reading, suggesting that labor demand is slipping. This finding is a reflection on the slowing nature of the economic expansion.

     Public assistance claims processed at the Wisconsin Rapids office showed solid declines (Table 9). The total caseload fell 12.2%, while initial applications registered an 11.6% drop from the first quarter of 1984. Public assistance claims serve as a measure of financial stress and long term unemployment. Two years of economic expansion has helped to alle­viate these problems to some degree.

     Table 10 is based on the number of unemployment claims handled through the Wisconsin Rapids district Job Service office. These figures include Wood, Portage, Adams, Marquette and Washara Counties. More localized data will be available in six months. Total unemployment claims showed a 5.5% increase during the first quarter. However, an even more disturbing finding is the 11.2% rise over last year in initial unemployment claims. These data indicate that the economic expansion is slowing.

     Residential construction activity in the Wisconsin Rapids area was light during the'first quarter but above the 1984 level (Table 11). Residential construction statistics are based on building permits filed with the city of Wisconsin Rapids and the town of Grand Rapids. Healthy growth is reported in all categories of the local housing market. However, percen­tage gains are misleading due to the usual winter induced construction slowdown.

     Nonresidential construction, which includes new starts and major remodeling projects, also shows the effects of the winter weather (Table 12).  The number of permits rose over last year but the value of new projects is dwarfed by the 1984 figure. The reason for this discrepancy is a major permit filed by Consolidated Papers in February of last year.

     Financial statistics can be found in Table 13.