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A summary of the
Marshfield results is as follows.
Total nonfarm employment rose by
approximately 1.0 percent.
Retailer confidence about the future
direction of store sales and traffic remains glum.
Help wanted advertising has picked
up over the past twelve months.
However, unemployment claims in the
county have risen substantially over the same period.
Surprisingly, construction activity
is generally above the levels of 2007.
Wood County industrial sector employment is presented in Table
7.
The national economy has lost hundreds of
thousands of jobs since last year.
However, employment in Wood County
expanded by approximately 1.0 percent during the same period.
Wood County employment sectors that
experienced growth were transportation & utilities, education & health services,
leisure & hospitality, and information & business services.
Sectors that declined in employment
were construction & natural resources, manufacturing, trade, financial activity,
and government.
The decline of 500 positions in
manufacturing was the most negative aspect of the results.
The CWERB survey of local merchants is given in
Table 8.
This group believes total sales were
slightly ahead of last year’s pace, but store traffic was perceived to be about
the same as a year ago.
When they were asked about the
future they indicated that sales and store traffic compared to a year ago at the
same time would be lower for their establishment.
Help wanted advertising is displayed in Table 9
for the Marshfield area.
Economists use help wanted
advertising as a barometer of future labor market conditions.
The index rose from 86 to 92 over
the past twelve months, a 7 percent increase in local advertising.
The U.S. index, however, fell from
27 to 17 over the past twelve months, a decline of 37 percent.
It is widely understood that web
based job advertising has been displacing newspaper help wanted
advertising.
But most economists still believe
that help wanted advertising serves a useful role in forecasting labor market
conditions.
Table 10 and Table 11 give the
reader insight into the amount of family financial distress being experienced in
the county.
Public assistance claims in
Marshfield were virtually unchanged from a year ago, declining from 79 to 78.
However, unemployment claims data on
a county wide basis shows that new unemployment claims rose from 212 to 251 or
by 18.4 percent.
Likewise, total claims climbed from
1,339 to 1,499 or by 11.9 percent.
This strongly suggests that
layoffs in the southern part of Wood County are having a huge influence on the
numbers.
Table 12 shows that residential construction in second
quarter 2008 was substantially above the total for 2007.
The number of new residential
permits increased from 2 to 9 and the estimated value of the construction rose
from $585 thousand to $2.3 million dollars.
The number of residential alteration
permits also increased.
The number of permits went from 43
to 56.
However, the estimated value of the
alteration activity actually declined from $1.5 million to $474 thousand.
The nonresidential construction figures are presented in
Table 13 without percentage changes.
Due to the large scale nature of
these projects the number can be very volatile thus reducing the value of
presenting percentage changes.
The number of permits rose from 1 to
4 over the course of the year.
The estimated value of the new
permits climbed from $300 thousand to $1.7 million.
Business alteration permits fell
from 29 to 23 and the value of the alteration activity rose from $4.8 million to
$5.6 million.
In sum, nonresidential construction
activity in the Marshfield area was stronger this year when it is compared to
last year’s totals.
Table 14 and Table15 present Clark
County economic data.
Clark County’s total nonfarm
employment grew by 3.9 percent from June 2007 to June 2008.
Total employment in Clark is
estimated to have expanded by 5.2 percent over the same time frame.
In addition, the unemployment rate
fell from 5.4 percent to 4.8 percent.
By in large the June 2007 to June
2008 time frame was a period of expansion for Clark County.
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