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The
results for this quarter suggest that the Central Wisconsin economy is fairly
stable. However, there are
pockets of concern. For example,
the manufacturing sector has taken a pounding over the past year.
Since manufacturing is a very important part of the Central Wisconsin
economy, it does raise some concerns about the area's well being.
In contrast, retail activity seems to be holding up very well as
consumers continue to spend and keep the economy afloat.
The
unemployment rates for the three counties, the nation, and the state are given
in Table 2. Portage and Wood
County experienced declines in their respective unemployment rates.
However, Marathon's rate remained stable and the state of Wisconsin
experienced an increase in its unemployment rate. Central Wisconsin's labor force weighted unemployment rate
is estimated to have declined from 5.1 to 4.8 percent over the year.
Meanwhile the U.S. unemployment rate shot upwards from 4.7 percent to
6.0 percent. Thus, our area has
done little bit better than the nation in maintaining its payrolls.
Total
employment figures for the three counties, the state, and the nation are
presented in Table 3. Portage,
Marathon, and Wood County are all estimated to have grown during the last
year. The employment increases were; 2.2 percent for Portage; 1.5
percent for Marathon; and 2.4 percent for Wood. Wisconsin employment is estimated to have expanded by 1.6
percent, and the U.S. is thought to have contracted by 0.7 percent.
Once again our area has performed better than the national average.
The
economic picture for Central Wisconsin appears to be somewhat different when
we look at industrial sector employment, as shown in Table
4.
A greater degree of economic weakness is evident in the industrial
sector numbers. For example
manufacturing, and construction payrolls are smaller than what they were a
year ago. In contrast, services,
trade, and government employment exceeded last year's total. For the record manufacturing declined by 4.8 percent; and
construction was down by 17.4 percent; services expanded by 1.5 percent; and
trade and government grew respectively by 5.2 and 1.1 percent.
Table
5 provides evidence that retail activity in Portage and Marathon was higher
than twelve months ago. Portage
county sales tax collections grew from $990 thousand to $1.04 million dollars,
a gain of nearly 5 percent. Similarly,
Marathon County expanded from $2.3 million to $2.42 million, or by 6.2 percent
over the same period. Even though
not all activity is covered by the sales tax, it is nonetheless a very good
barometer of the level of economic activity.
The
CWERB survey of region business executives lends additional insight into the
overall state of the economy (Table 6). This
group believes that recent changes at the national and local levels have been
negligible. In other words they
do not perceive that there has been any major changes going on with regard to
the economy. In their opinion it
appears that the economy is stuck in a jobless expansion.
This group thinks that the national and local economies will improve
modestly by next quarter. They
also feel that their particular industries will fair better in the future. In sum, the survey seems to indicate that the economy is in a
period devoid of significant momentum.
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