The economic indicators for third quarter 2007 are as follows.  Nonfarm total unemployment is estimated to have expanded by 5.5 percent over the past twelve months.  Local retailers indicated that store traffic and sales are stronger than a year ago.  Help wanted advertising remains stable in the area.  The data suggest that public assistance claims have increased and unemployment claims have declined.  Lastly residential and nonresidential construction activity is well off the pace of third quarter 2006.

     Total nonfarm employment comes from a state of Wisconsin survey of business firms (Table 7).  Total nonfarm employment is estimated to have grown by a very healthy amount.  Nonfarm employment payrolls expanded from 35.4 thousand to 37.3 thousand or by 5.5 percent over the course of the year.  Except for manufacturing and transportation & utilities, all the other sectors in the local economy expanded.  Financial activities and leisure & hospitality added the most positions over the past twelve months; 600 and 1,000 jobs respectively. 

     The retailer survey presented in Table 8 shows that local merchants are generally more optimistic than what they were in June 2007.  When surveyed in September the groups said that store sales and traffic were better than a year ago.  More importantly they believe that future store traffic and sales will be higher during the coming holiday period.  As alluded to earlier their overall assessment of the local retail scene indicates an improvement taking place in retail conditions. 

     Help wanted advertising is an indicator of the health of the local labor market (Table 9).  Even though it does not capture all of the positions available in the community it is nonetheless highly correlated to the direction of the labor market.  The help wanted index for Stevens Point remains virtually unchanged from last period.  This suggests that labor market conditions in the next quarter should remain fairly stable.  

     Table 10 and Table 11 present information on the level of family financial distress in Portage County.  The number of new public assistance claims on a monthly average basis rose from 254 to 270; representing an increase of 6.3 percent.  However, the total public assistant caseload barely rose from third quarter 2006.  The total caseload figure went from 5,424 to 5,488, rising by 1.2 percent over the past twelve months.  During that same time period unemployment claims on a weekly average basis dropped from 151 to 120 for a decline of 20.4 percent.  Likewise the number of total claims contracted from 949 to 789 or by 16.9 percent. 

     Residential construction activity numbers are given in Table 12.  In general the data indicate a fall off in this type of activity.  Residential permits issued fell from 37 to 25 or 32.4 percent in the year over comparison.  The value of the home building activity declined from $8.3 million to $5.2 million, a decline of almost 37 percent.  The number of units actually rose from 48 to 51 over the year.  Residential alteration activity fell from 246 permits to 219 permits, or by 11 percent; and the associated value for alteration activity declined by about 10.5 percent. 

June 2007

September 2007