The Wausau area economy performed nicely over the past twelve months.  The unemployment rate is down and employment is up in all reporting categories .  Almost all other indicators of performance support the idea that local economic development stayed on track for the resident of the Wausau area.   

     Marathon county industrial sector payrolls grew by 1,300 positions or by 2.0 percent from a year ago (Table 7).  All sectors but government participated in this expansion.  Services and trade lead the growth by adding 400 and 600 positions respectively.   Manufacturing and construction added 200 and 100 positions.  As of second quarter 1998 there are 66.9 thousand people employed in all of these sectors, compared to 65.6 thousand in 1997.   

     Retailer confidence in Table 8 shows that our panel of local merchants believes that sales and store traffic are much improved over last year's figures.  This group is also very optimistic with regard to the future.  Expected sales and traffic are forecasted to be higher than a year ago.  At the national level, one of the key features of the current expansion is the strong growth in retail sector activity.  

     Help wanted advertising is a useful barometer of local labor market conditions (Table 9).  The index does not capture all employment opportunities in an area nonetheless the correlation between it and available employment in an area makes it an indicator worth watching.  For June 1998 the index in Wausau remained at an elevated level and stands at 206.  This means that there are about 2 jobs being advertised for every one job in the base year.  The U.S. index figure moved upward by about 12 percent from a year earlier.  Both local ad state indexes point towards an increase in employment levels.    

     Public assistance claims data on a monthly average basis is given in Table 10.  The figures represent only general assistance.  The numbers are so low in Marathon County as to make percentage changes rather meaningless.  Suffice it say that the numbers in Table 10  are incredibly low and reflect the effects of the state's W2 plan and the strength of the local economy.   Another measure of local family distress is unemployment claims data on a weekly average basis
(Table 11).  Here we see that new claims have risen by 14.5 percent and total claims by 7.5 percent since last year.  Thus, there has been an increase over the past year in the number of people who have been laid off from their jobs. 

     Residential construction in Wausau was booming during second quarter 1998 (Table 12).  The number of residential permits issued was 122 and their estimated value was $14.1 million.  Both figures exceed 1997 totals.  Housing permits reached 140 during the period.  Another area of strength was the residential alteration activity.  A total of 426 permits were issued and their value is estimated to be $2.1 million.  Once again these figures exceeded those of 1997. 

     Nonresidential construction activity is very volatile (Table 13).  Therefore, no percentage changes are given.  The number of permits issued was 10 and they are valued at $3.9 million.  The alteration picture for the Wausau area shows that there were 48 permits issued with are value estimated to be at $9.0 million.  Overall activity was lower this year when compared to last.  Major alteration projects include work being done at Utschig Imperial, Best Buy, Linetec, and Wausau Hospital. 

     Financial statistics for the Wausau area indicate that the local economy continues to move forward (Table 14).  The amount of bank deposits in our sample grew from $1.23 billion to $1.42 billion during the year, or by a robust 15 percent.  Likewise, bank lending rose from $1.08 billion to $1.12 billion over the period, a gain of about 4.5 percent.