The Wausau area economy continues to send mixed signals with regard to its overall condition.  For example, the unemployment rate is slightly higher than a year ago, but total employment is also higher.  In addition, industrial sector employment shows that most sectors have lost jobs since the last year and manufacturing in particular has been hard hit by job contractions.  In contrast, building activity and retail spending have held up very nicely over the past twelve months.

The industrial sector employment figures in Table 7 show that the Wausau area has had a difficult time generating new jobs.  As previously mentioned, manufacturing was especially hard hit by firm downsizing.  It is estimated that manufacturing payrolls contracted by about 1,200 jobs since last year.  Likewise the construction and government sectors experienced declines of 600 and 100 positions respectively.  Please note that while construction employment is lower than last year, the amount of building activity actually expanded.  The very large and important services sector, however, remained unchanged from a year ago.  The only major sector to experience employment growth was the trade sector.

The employment gains in the trade sector coincide with the results of the CWERB retailer confidence survey and the increase in sales tax data (Table 8).  Local merchants believe that total sales and store traffic are improved over last year's marks.  This group of merchants also believes that store sales and store traffic will be better than twelve months ago.  Thus, retail spending appears to have expanded in the local area.

Another hopeful sign for the future of the local economy is the help wanted advertising index, as shown in Table 9 which rose in June.  The index increased from 93 to 109 over the past twelve months, or by 17 percent.  Thus, the local labor market may be showing some signs of life.  However, the U.S. help wanted advertising index declined from 60 to 45 in a year over comparison.  This would indicate that job growth at the national level may be a difficult thing to achieve over the remainder of the year.

Another indication that the local area has experienced an increase in family financial distress comes from Table 10.  New unemployment claim data on a weekly average basis increased from 363 to 392, or 8.1 percent from last year.  Moreover, total unemployment claims expanded from 2,052 to 2,832, or by a very large 38 percent in one year over comparison.  Thus the slowing of the economy has had a negative impact on the local labor market and the level of family financial distress.

In spite of the fact that construction employment figures are lower than a year ago, the amount of construction activity remains at elevated levels as displayed in Table 11.  Borrowing rates are at forty-year lows and have provided a great deal of stimulus to construction activity.  Further, declines on Wall Street have led some people to consider alternative forms of investment, like real estate.  The number of residential permits issued rose by 7.8 percent and the value of this construction is estimated to be 21 percent greater than a year ago.  Similarly the number of housing units increased by 17 percent.  Alteration activity also expanded in our year comparison.  The number of alteration permits issued rose 2.5 percent and the estimated value climbed by 14 percent.

Nonresidential construction activity was also above the pace of a year ago (Table 12).  The number of permits issued was 12 with an estimated value of $31 million.  It should be pointed out that about $25 million of that total comes from the construction of a new high school.  The number of business alteration permits reached 53 and the value of the alterations was $12.4 million.  Approximately $3 million of this total comes from a major remodeling of a large local retail operation.