The economic indicators for the Marshfield area suggest that the area economy has slowed down over the past twelve months.  A number of the indicators point to this conclusion.  The economic difficulty seems to be centered in the manufacturing sector.  Over capacity in many manufacturing industries in relation to worldwide demand has greatly impacted this sectors' profitability.

     Manufacturing employment in Wood County has been hard hit by the national slowdown (Table 7).  Manufacturing payrolls are estimated to be nearly 3.0 percent lower than one year ago.  Government employment, likewise, declined by approximately 2.0 percent in the county.  Offsetting these contractions were the employment gains in services and trade.  These sectors grew by 1.6 and 3.2 percent respectively.  Construction employment was unchanged in the year over comparison.  Due to Marshfield's greater reliance on the services sector than Wood County as a whole, it is estimated through the Marshfield Employment Index that local employment has increased by 1.7 percent. 

     Marshfield retailers remain down beat in their assessment of local store sales and traffic (Table 8).  When asked to compare store sales and traffic to the previous year they felt that activity was lower.  However, when this group was asked to forecast expected sales and traffic three months from now compared to a year ago, they indicated that matters would be moderately higher.  This bodes well for the local retail scene.

     Help wanted advertising is a barometer of local labor market conditions (Table 9).  The index for the Marshfield area declined significantly, falling from 262 to 135.  The 135 mark means there are 1.35 jobs being advertised for each one in the base year.  However, the 1.35 positions is much below the 2.62 figure of just twelve months ago.  This indicates that employers have greatly reduced their hiring plans.  A survey of Wisconsin employers, conducted by a temporary employment provider, suggested that only about 24 percent of firms in the survey planned to increase their workforces.  From a historic standpoint, this is a very low hiring rate.

     Public assistance claims on a countywide basis are presented in Table 10.  The total caseload on a monthly average basis increased form 2,597 to 2,813 or by 8.3 percent.  This result indicates that the level of financial distress has gone up for some Wood County households.

     Another measure of household financial distress comes from the unemployment claim data for Wood County (Table 11).  The number of new claims on a weekly average basis rose sharply from 213 to 334, or by nearly 57 percent.  Likewise, total claims on a weekly average basis shot upwards from 1,031 to 1,643 or by approximately 60 percent from a year ago.

     Residential construction in the Marshfield area is given in Table 12.  The number of permits declined from 21 to 10 or 52 percent in the year over comparison.  The estimated value of the construction contracted by nearly 40 percent.  Residential alteration activity actually increased over the year as the number of residential alteration permits rose from 62 to 72, a gain of 16 percent.  The associated estimated value of the alteration activity climbed by 3.3 percent. 

     As usual, nonresidential construction activity is presented without percentage changes (Table 13).  This is a very volatile time series and is subject to large percentage changes.  The number of permits issued was 24 in Second Quarter of 2001 and the estimated value of the new structures hit $4.3 million.  Business alteration activity saw 16 permits being issued and they were estimated to be worth $472 thousand.

     Clark County economic data are presented in Table 14 and Table 15.  The economic situation in Clark County has been surprisingly strong.  Manufacturing, services, and construction payrolls are ahead of last year's marks.  Trade was unchanged over the period and government employment is estimated to be lower than a year ago.  Total employment is also higher rising from 15,769 to 16,179 or by 2.6 percent.  However, due to a surge in the labor force the unemployment rate rose from 5.7 to 6.7 percent.  Simply stated, the number of people wanting jobs grew more quickly than the ability of the economy to generate positions.