The area economy did well over the past twelve months. The seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate fell to just 4.4 percent and total employment expanded by almost 2.0 percent. Industrial sector employment increased by 1,100 positions with all sectors reporting gains except government. Retailer confidence and sales tax distributions indicate that the local retail sector is very healthy. The local labor market remains tight as indicated by amount of businesses advertising. 

     On a less upbeat note new public assistance claims are higher than a year ago and unemployment claims both new and total are higher than last year. Further, residential construction activity has cooled substantially over the year but nonresidential building was very robust when compared to past years. 

     Marathon county industrial sector employment increased by 1,100 positions or 1.9 percent from June 1994 (Table 7). All sectors except for government expanded their payrolls. Manufacturing added 200 jobs, services 300, trade 600, and construction 400 in the year over comparison. In sum, as of second quarter there are 59.2 thousand industrial sector jobs in Marathon county. 

     Table 8 gives this quarter's retailer confidence survey results. The impressions of the merchants are confirmed by data presented earlier in Table 5 on sales tax distributions. Our group of local merchants believe that store traffic and sales were much higher than a year ago. Moreover, they forecast that retail activity in their local businesses will be much more vigorous in the quarter ahead than a year ago at the same time. Thus, the data in Table 8 and 5 indicate that Marathon county had a very strong retail sector. 

     The health of the local labor market is examined in Table 9. Help wanted advertising in the area was lower by 8.9 percent when compared to last year. The index fell from 252 to 232. Even though a decline means that area and state businesses are not advertising to the same extent as one year ago, the number of listings is impressive. For example the 232 figure indicates there are 2.3 advertisements for each one posted in 1980. Thus, the labor market remains tight for area businesses. 

     New public assistance claims in Wausau have been trending higher since early 1994 (Table 10). For this quarter the number of general assistance claims rose from just 11 to 17 on a monthly average basis. Meanwhile though, the total caseload in the Wausau area tumbled downward from 78 to 65 on a monthly average basis. This series had been trending upward since early 1993. 

     Another dimension to local family financial distress is the number of unemployment claims filed. Table 11 shows that new and total claims have risen over the years. New claims expanded from 362 to 385 on a weekly average basis or 6.4 percent. Likewise total claims on a weekly average basis rose from 2,262 to 2,526 or by 11.7 percent. As a side note total claims have been trending upward since mid‑1993 on a seasonally adjusted basis. 

     Table 12 shows that residential construction activity was off last years pace. The cooling m activity was evident in the number of permits issued down by 15.3 percent, the estimated value of new homes lower by 4.4 percent, the number of residential alteration permits issued smaller by 1.f3 Percent. The two bright spots in this quarters report were the number of housing units higher by 22.9 percent and the value of alterations which was higher by almost 1f) percent. Please note the number of housing units figure for this quarter is somewhat inked because it  includes the number of units in a residential complex. 

     As always, percentage changes are not given in Table 13 due to the volatile nature of capital investment. The results for this quarter show the number of permits was 18 with an estimated value of $4.2 million. The number of business alteration permits was estimated to be $2.5 million Compared to second quarters of past years the amount of activity was well above the norm in terms of dollar value. 

     Financial statistics for the Marathon county area are presented in Table 14. The reported gains of 25.2 percent for bank deposits and 29.5 percent for bank loans are indeed substantial but should be viewed with some caution. Merger activity in the financial services sector is one of the major trends in this business and is affecting the results. over the course of time this scenario will settle down and a reliable base will once again be established for comparison purposes and a reliable base will once again be established for comparison purposes.