Good economic news can be reported for third quarter 1993. Every measure of economic activity was positive for the Wausau area. Total employment and industrial sector employment were above last year's marks by 1.8 and 4.5 percent respectively. The seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate plunged from 5.9 to 3.5 percent from a year ago. Retailer confidence with regard to both past and present conditions was strong and help wanted advertising has improved steadily since 1992. Local family financial distress is lower than a year ago according to public assistance and unemployment claims data. Construction activity in the area remains brisk and financial statistics for the area for the quarter indicate a quite healthy economy. 

     The area has seen and will see an even larger expansion in its retail sector. Clearly, this demonstrates that area businesses have much confidence in the vitality of the Wausau area economy. Even with all the good news, it should not be overlooked that the J.1. Case plant finally closed after many years of providing high wage jobs to area residents. Further the bad weather of 1993 surely caused many local farmers to suffer significant financial setbacks. 

     Marathon County industrial sector employment gained 2,400 positions in a year over comparison with September 1992 (Table 7). This increase of nearly 45 percent is well above the job generation rate for the U.S. In more detail, services, trade, and construction employment were higher than last year by 5.9, 8.3, and 40.0 percent respectively. Manufacturing fell by 0.6 percent or 100 jobs and, similarly, government employment contracted by 300 positions or 4.5 percent. The long term trend since the mid 1980's shows that manufacturing employment has increased on a seasonally adjusted basis from around 11,000 to approximately 16,000 persons, an increase of 45 percent. Meanwhile, service sector employment has also done well over the same time period increasing from around 13,000 to approximately 18,000 or 38 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis. Since 1985, trade, construction, and government employment have increased by about 2500, 1800, and 500 persons each. 

     Retailer confidence in Table 8 shows that local merchants are very upbeat about sales and store traffic for the third quarter when compared to a year ago. As a matter of record, these two series have been trending upward with little interruption since late 1990. When this group was asked to forecast future sales and traffic three months from now compared to last year, they replied that they expected matters in the retail sector to be much improved. Once again, the trend for these two indicators has been upward since late 1990 indicating that area merchants have become increasingly more confident in their assessment of local retail conditions. 

     Table 9 presents help wanted advertising for Wausau. This barometer of local labor market conditions gained 13 points from last year. The 185 reading means there are 1.85 jobs being advertised for every one job in 1980. The local help wanted advertising index peaked on a seasonally adjusted basis in third quarter 1988 at around 230, and later fell to a low of 160 in late 1989. Another major decline (to 155) in advertising took place during the latter part of 1990 and continued into early 1991. Since mid 1991 the index has been trending slowly upward. 

     Public assistance claims, a measure of local family financial distress, are presented in Table 10. New applications fell from 18 to 12 on a monthly average basis and total caseload contracted from 90 to 61. Table 11 is another measure of local family financial distress and it, too, tells a similar story. Initial unemployment claims on a weekly average basis declined from 295 to 185 in a year over comparison, and total unemployment claims contracted from 1565 to 1248. Thus, the data in Tables 10 and 11 signals an abatement in the level of local financial distress in the Wausau area. 

     Residential construction in the Wausau area was brisk, but not up to the robust levels achieved last year (Table 12). The number of permits issued, the estimated value of new construction, the number of housing units, and the number of residential permits issued were 9.3, 7.4, 21.7, and 10.8 percent lower than third quarter 1992. Only the estimated value of residential alterations was higher and by just 2.9 percent. However, the long‑term secular trend for all the categories has been upward. For instance, in 1985, the estimated value of new residential construction was around 15 million, on a seasonally adjusted basis, compared to approximately 7.5 million in 1993, an increase of 400 percent.

     Due to the singular and therefore volatile nature of nonresidential construction percent changes are not given. The number of permits for new construction was 8 with an estimated value of $3.95 million (Table 13). With regard to alteration activity, 33 permits, valued at approximately $5.7 million, were issued. The long‑term secular trend for new construction on a seasonally adjusted basis has been stable (with an occasional sharp fluctuation occurring about the trend line) since the mid 1980's.
 

     Financial statistics for the Wausau area are given in Table 14. Bank deposits expanded by 40.3 million dollars or 5.6 percent from one year ago. Since 1985 the sample of area deposits has expanded from approximately $450 million to around $750 million on a seasonally adjusted basis. This represents a 67 percent increase. Bank lending in our sample expanded by $79.5 million or 14.6 percent from last year and by approximately 70 percent from 1985. Both lending and deposit activity reflect the overall economic health of the region.