The statistics for this quarter strongly suggest that our regional economy is growing and remains strong. Employment is generally higher in terms of both total employment and industrial sector payrolls. The unemployment rates remain at low levels for the region. Finally, regional business leaders indicate that the local economy is holding its own.

     Unemployment rates for Portage and Marathon counties stood at 4.7 and 4.6 percent respectively (Table 2). These are improvements over last year's respective rates of 5.0 percent. Wood county's rate, however, increased from 5.8 to 6.1 percent over the same period. For the three county area, the labor force weighted unemployment rate dropped from 5.2 to 5.0 percent. This mark is somewhat higher than that for Wisconsin, which stands at a super low 3.8 percent. The U.S. registered an unemployment rate of 5.0 percent, equaling the three‑county figure.

     Employment growth amounted to a 1.7 percent increase in Portage, a 2.5 percent surge in Marathon, and a gain of 1.3 percent in Wood (Table 3). Total employment in the area increased by nearly 3,000 jobs, or by about 2.0 percent, since last March.  The rate of job generation in the local area exceeded that of the nation's 1.6 percent mark, but fell somewhat short of the 2.3 percent pace set by the state. Clearly the expansion, which commenced in 1991 for the nation, state, and region, continues to unfold.

     Central Wisconsin industrial sector employment activity is depicted in Table 4. All sectors, except for government, registered solid gains. Specifically the largest employers, manufacturing and services, added 2.7 and 2.6 percent respectively to their payrolls. Trade and construction also did well in creating new jobs, 3.5 and  6.2 percent for these categories. In sum, Central Wisconsin industries increased their number of jobs by 2.4 percent on a year over comparison basis.

     County sales tax distribution from the state to the county level is given in Table 5. Here we see that Portage county sales tax figures increased 2.4 percent from a year ago. This corresponds to the results contained in the survey of Portage county merchants who suggested that sales were only slightly higher when compared to last year. However, Marathon saw a surge of nearly 9 percent in sales tax collections. Collections associated with first quarter activity totaled nearly $1.9 million in Marathon county.

     The CWERB business confidence index for Central Wisconsin is given in
Table 6. Our panel of regional business leaders expressed the collective opinion that there has not been a great deal of change in either the national or local economic conditions. Given the health of the economy these results can be construed to mean that matters are still doing relatively well. When asked about the future this group believes that economic activity will be slightly higher in the next quarter, as compared to last year.