|
The results of this report are summarized in the following paragraph.
Industrial sector employment is off the pace of last year; Wisconsin paper
manufacturing employment, while considerably below its peak level, may be
trending upward; help wanted advertising is up by about 14 percent from a year
ago; public assistance claims in Wood County have contracted by 26 percent; the
total caseload of unemployment claims fell by about 9 percent from a year ago;
Wisconsin's average manufacturing wage has been flat over the past several
years; and other data in the report suggest that the labor force has
contracted.
Total nonfarm employment is based upon a
statewide survey of employment (Table 7). For Wood County the state estimates that
total nonfarm employment contracted by 2.1 percent from June 2004, or by 900
positions. The largest contributors to the decline were the manufacturing and
government sectors. Each sector lost an estimated 500 positions since June
2004. The only sector to register an increase was transportation and
utilities. This sector added 200 positions for a 6.2 percent gain. There were
five sectors that were statistically unchanged over the year.
Figure 1 presents
Wisconsin's paper manufacturing employment from 2003 to the present. Paper
manufacturing employment in the state has declined from 41.5 thousand to around
38.0 thousand over the period. However, the good news is that employment in
this important sector appears to be in the midst of a recovery. The low point
in paper manufacturing employment occurred in earlier 2005 and has trended
upward since this date. Increases in world wide demand for these products has
contributed to the recent scenario.
Table 8 shows the help
wanted advertising index increasing from 118 to 135 over the past twelve
months. This means that job advertising has grown by approximately 14 percent.
Further, the index reading of 135 indicates that there are 1.35 jobs being
advertised for each job listed in the base year. The U.S. index remained
virtually unchanged over the same period. Help wanted advertising only picks up
a small part of the total number of jobs available in an area. However,
economists have found a strong correlation between these indexes and future
labor market activity.
Additional good news comes from the public
assistance claims data (Table 9). For Wood County the total caseload on a
monthly average basis declined from 115 to 85 cases. This is a contraction of
about 26 percent. Another helpful measurement of family financial distress is
unemployment claims data (Table 10). On a county wide
basis, new claims rose from 194 to 208, an increase of 7.2 percent. However,
better news comes from the fact that total claims fell from 1,526 to 1,393, or
by 8.7 percent.
Figure 2 gives Wisconsin
manufacturing average weekly earnings for the past three years. In 2003, the
weekly average rate stood at 645 dollars per week. In mid 2005 the average
weekly earning is just around 640 dollars. Thus, paper manufacturing wages have
been flat over the past several years. If inflation is taken into
consideration, the situation would show that real wages in manufacturing have
been falling. World wide competition has undoubtedly contributed to the
situation and has helped to put downward pressure on manufacturing wages.
Figure 3 through 6 give
the reader a good overview of some of the major economic trends in the local
area. Figure 3 shows that employment in Wood County has been trending upward
since the beginning of the year. However, about 2,000 jobs have disappeared
from the peak period in 2004. Figure 4, however, shows
that unemployment has stayed at about the same level over the past three years.
In addition, fluctuations in these figures represent the seasonal nature of
unemployment levels. Figure 5 shows that this is also
true for the unemployment rate in Wood County. If employment in an
area has generally trended downward over a number of years and yet the
unemployment rate is fairly consistent of the same period, it means the labor
force must be contracting. This is indeed the case as Figure
6 shows this to be true for Wood County. From mid 2003 to 2005
approximately 2,000 people have dropped out of the labor force. This means that
they are no longer looking for employment. |
