Employment in the three counties rose in our year over comparison (Table 3).  Since last June, Portage and Marathon county payrolls expanded by an estimated 1,300 and 4,400 positions respectively.  Wood County also had a good increase in jobs as 2,100 were created since last year.  Overall, Central Wisconsin employment jumped by 7,800 or by 5.5 percent.  These results strongly suggest that the area economy has experienced twelve strong months of growth.

     Industrial sector employment is given in Table 4.  Manufacturing and construction employment remained stable at the relatively high levels of 35.5 and 7.0 thousand.  Service sector employment, meanwhile, exploded upwards by 6.1 percent from last year.  Trade also grew by a healthy 2.1 percent, and government payrolls are estimated to be higher by 400 positions.  Overall, industrial sector payrolls grew by about 2.4 percent.

     Sales tax collections are a barometer of the local retail scene.  The amounts recorded for this quarter were truly amazing (Table 5).  Portage County is estimated to have had a 38 percent gain in retail activity and Marathon about a 39 percent surge.  I would caution the reader that the state has had some problems in its ability to collect accurate data.  So even though there is little doubt that sales tax numbers would have increased from last year, the magnitude of the change may be overstated.

     The level of key sector employment in our three county region is given in
Figure 5A and Figure 5B.  These figures give the reader an historic overview as to how employment has increased in manufacturing, services, trade, construction, and government.  It also gives the reader the opportunity to examine how the sectors have changed in relative importance.  Thus, small year to year changes can add up to become major secular trends.

     Some very interesting results are presented in Table 6.  The survey of regional business executives shows that they believe that recent changes at the national and local levels have been less than favorable.  When asked about the future this group is of the view that the economy regardless of the level will cool off in the months ahead.  This group strongly believes that the economy will weaken during the remainder of this year.  Given the robust expansion of the first part of the year, regional business leaders feel that the pace is unsustainable.