The economic results for this quarter suggest that the area has experienced some economic difficulty.  While it may be true that total employment and industrial employment are slightly ahead of last year's totals, other economic indicators suggest that economic conditions have weakened over the past twelve months. 

            Portage County industrial sector employment given in Table 7 shows that only the trade and government sectors managed to register increases in payrolls.  Respectively, the gains were 100 and 500 positions for these sectors.  Manufacturing, services, and construction employment contracted by 200, 100, and 200 positions over the past twelve months.  Thus, only 100 net jobs were created over the past year, or a scant 0.3 percent gain in industrial sector employment. 

            The CWERB retailer confidence survey is displayed in Table 8. Local merchants believe that total sales compared to last year are lower.  Moreover, this group feels even more strongly that store traffic is off the pace from a year ago.  This assessment correlates with the findings on sales tax collections.  This group was also asked to forecast future store traffic and sales.  The local merchants on our panel believe that both measures will increase, but only modestly.  Given the fact that this group is usually very optimistic by nature, this assessment can be said to be guarded. 

            A good barometer of local labor market conditions is the help wanted advertising index for Portage County (Table 9).  From March of last year the index has fallen from 159 to 91, or a decline of 45 percent.  Thus, there has been a sharp curtailment in the hiring plans of business firms.  The soft labor market situation is also evident in the U.S. help wanted advertising figures.  There we see that advertising is off by approximately 30 percent from a year ago.

             Additional evidence to suggest that the local area has suffered from the economic malaise is contained in Table 10 and Table 11.  New Public Assistance claims in Portage County rose from 132 to 142 on a monthly average basis.  Moreover, the total caseload figure for Portage County rose from 2,226 to 2,631, an increase of 18.2 percent.  Another measure of local family financial distress is unemployment claim information.  On a weekly average basis, new claims rose from 272 to 292, an increase of 7.4 percent.  More disturbing is the fact that total unemployment claims rose from 1,701 to 2,021.  This represents an increase of about 19 percent from First Quarter 2001.

             Residential construction activity in Table 12 shows that the number of residential permits issued contracted slightly from 39 to 37.  The estimated value of this activity, however, climbed from $5.6 to $5.9 million.  The number of housing units produced from these permits was 41.  Residential alteration activity expanded from a year ago.  The estimated value of home alterations grew from $667 thousand to $939 thousand over the year.  Thus, the residential housing component of construction activity held up fairly well over the course of the year. 

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December 2001

March 2002