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The major findings for the Marshfield area report are as follows: manufacturing
continues to be hard hit by the economy; service sector employment continues to
grow; local merchants are only moderately impressed with fourth quarter store
traffic and sales; help wanted advertising continues to contract in the area;
public assistance and unemployment claim data suggest an increase in local
family financial distress; and residential construction activity is booming in
the local area.
Most
of the industrial sector employment numbers in Wood county were lower than last
year's totals. Manufacturing continues to be hard hit by the recent slowdown
in economic activity. Payrolls in manufacturing have declined by approximately
5.1 percent from a year ago (Table 7). Similarly payrolls
contracted by 1.9 percent in trade, 11.8 percent in construction, and 1.8
percent in government. However, the services sector gained an impressive 4.3
percent in terms of the number of jobs. The increase in services helped to push
the Marshfield Employment Index upwards by 0.8 percent. This index suggests that
service sector dependent Marshfield experienced a slight gain in its overall
industrial employment.
The
CWERB survey of local merchants presents the sentiments of the group (Table_8).
When these merchants were asked to assess total sales and store traffic compared
to the previous year's level, they thought that retail activity was only
moderately better than a year ago. When this group was asked to make a forecast
concerning store traffic and sales, they felt conditions would only improve
marginally in the near future.
Help
wanted advertising is a good barometer of labor market conditions. The index for
Marshfield fell from 116 to 84 over the past twelve months (Table
9). This signals a 27 percent decline in job advertising. Moreover, the 84
mark indicates there are only 84 jobs today being advertised for every 100 jobs
in the base year of 1980. Likewise the national help wanted advertising index
declined from 45 to 40, an 11 percent decline in advertising.
A
measure of local family financial distress is public assistance claim data (Table
10). Total caseload on a monthly average basis rose from 2,980 to 3,317, a
gain of about 11 percent. These data are collected on a county wide basis for
Wood. Another important measure of local family financial distress are the
unemployment claim data (Table 11). New claims on a
weekly average basis climbed from 366 to 382, or 4.4 percent. Of greater
significance is the fact that the total claims rose from 1,307 to 1,652 for a
large 26.4 percent surge in claim activity. Altogether the public assistance and
unemployment claim data suggests that there has been an increase in family
financial distress.
Residential
construction activity continues to boom in the local area (Table
12). The number of permits increased by nearly 73 percent and the associated
value of this activity climbed by 132.8 percent. The number of housing units
rose by 100 percent over the year. Residential alteration activity soared by 257
percent and the value of the alteration activity gained by 334 percent.
Nonresidential
construction activity is presented without percentage changes due to its
volatile nature (Table 13). The number of permits issued
was 6 with a value estimated to be $668 thousand. Similarly the number of
business alteration permits was 9, valued at $569 thousand.
Clark county economic data are presented in Tables 14
and 15. Highlights from these tables are as follows:
manufacturing, trade and government payrolls have all contracted from last year;
service and construction employment, however, expanded from 2001 levels. The
unemployment rate in Clark county is at about the same level as last year, 6.8
percent; and total employment increased by an estimated 1.7 percent. |
