|
Over
the past twelve months, the unemployment rate rose in both Portage and Wood
County. All
other reporting areas experienced declines.
Total employment, based on a household survey, was higher in all
geographic areas.
Industrial sector employment was slightly higher than a year ago.
Specifically, the manufacturing sector continues to have difficulty.
Most of the other sectors continue to expand their payrolls.
Sales tax collections have increased somewhat unevenly throughout the
region. Lastly,
central Wisconsin business executives are not as upbeat as they were in March
of this year.
The
unemployment rates in Portage and Wood counties increased from this time last
year (Table 2).
The unemployment rate for Portage now stands at 5.7 percent, and 6.3
percent for Wood.
Marathon county, however, experienced a decline in its unemployment
rate compared to a year ago.
The unemployment rate in Marathon fell to 4.2 percent.
The labor force weighted unemployment rate for the three county area
remained unchanged from June 2003 and stands at 5.1 percent.
The state and national unemployment rates fell to 5.1 percent and 5.8
percent respectively.
Total
employment in Table 3 comes from a government survey of
households.
All geographic area experienced employment growth over the past twelve
months. Portage,
Marathon, and Wood County payrolls expanded by 2.4 percent, 1.8 percent, and
0.9 percent respectively.
Central Wisconsin's employment base increased over the course of the
year from 151.7 thousand to 154.3 thousand, or by 1.7 percent.
The percent change employment is in line with the population growth
rate for the area.
Likewise the state and nation payrolls grew by 1.9 percent and 1.0
percent respectively.
Table
4 presents the employment statistics by sector.
These estimates are generated from a government survey of business
firms. Total
nonfarm employment is estimated to have increased from 148.8 thousand to 149.2
thousand or 0.3 percent over the past year.
The largest drag on employment growth was the decline registered in
manufacturing.
This sector's employment contracted from 32.3 thousand to 30.8
thousand, or by 4.6 percent.
In contrast, if manufacturing is excluded from the calculation all the
other industrial sectors in central Wisconsin grew by a respectable 1.63
percent over the past year.
The point is that the manufacturing sector continues to suffer through
some rather difficult times.
Table
5 presents county sales tax distributions figures.
In Portage County, sales tax collections rose from $1.09 million to
$1.1 million or by about 0.8 percent.
Marathon county collections expanded from $2.4 million to $2.6 million
or by approximately 10.6 percent.
Wood County's newly installed sales tax generated about $1.1 million
in collections.
Sales tax data are a useful barometer of the level of retail activity
in an area and gives insight into how the economy is performing.
The
CWERB's survey of regional business executives is given in Table
6. This
group is generally less optimistic than it was in March.
When asked about recent changes in economic conditions at the national
and local levels, they said that matters were about the same as a year ago.
In regard to future economic conditions at national, local, and
industry level they felt that matters would moderately improve.
This bodes well for the area economy and suggests slow but steady
improvement.
|
