Unemployment rates (Table 2) in the three county areas fell below last year's figures. Portage, Marathon, and Wood had unemployment rates of 4.6, 4.2, and 5.3 percent respectively during 1st Quarter 1999. The Central Wisconsin unemployment rate of 4.6 percent was slightly higher than rates of the state and nation. Due to weather related factors our area tends to have higher rates than the state and nation during the first three months of the year.

     The employment situation (Table 3) presents us with a mixed picture of the local situation. Employment expanded in Marathon county by 3.9 percent and by 1.3 percent in Wood county. However, Portage county total employment is estimated to have contracted by about 1.4 percent from last year. Overall, Central Wisconsin employment gained about 2 percent from 1998. This rate of job generation exceeded that of the state and nation.

     Good employment news is shown in Table 4. Every major industrial sector except for government posted employment gains over the course of the year. Manufacturing and services payrolls expanded by 1.7 percent and 3.4 percent respectively. Meanwhile, trade added 3.0 percent and construction 14.3 percent from 1998. Approximately 3,500 new jobs were created in the three county areas in these categories.

     County sales tax distributions (Table 5) for Portage county contracted from $834.7 thousand to $814.9 thousand or by about 2.5 percent from a year ago. During the same period, Marathon county collections stayed relatively constant. For Marathon, the 1998 figure was $1.9 million, and $1.8 million in 1999,or a slight drop of about 0.6 percent. Thus, after many quarters of brisk expansion both counties experienced a pause in the growth in collections.

     Relating to the Marshfield county version of the report, Figure 5A and Figure 5B show at a glance that employment in Central Wisconsin for the five major industrial sectors has been strong.  Additionally, these figures demonstrate the movement of each sector relative to each other, showing the largest gain occurring in the services sector.

     The business confidence index in Table 6 shows that a rebound as such took place in the confidence levels of regional business expectations. Although recent changes in national and local conditions are judged to be unchanged, in December this group felt that matters had become definitely worse. The regional business executives now believe, however, that the future is brighter than in December. They look for their industry conditions to improve over the next quarter as well.