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The Marshfield area economy demonstrated some
growth when compared to last year. The unemployment rate is down
2.9%, and total employment has increased by a slight percentage.
Areas of the local economy indicating continued improvement
include the retailer confidence index, help wanted advertising,
unemployment claims in Central Wisconsin, financial statistics,
and the local construction scene.
Table 7 presents Wood
County
employment by sector. Modest growth occurred in manufacturing
(2.0%) and services (1.3%). Moreover, construction displayed a
healthy gain of 67.1 %, but the increase is based on a small
total employment number. Trade and government employment showed
no improvement over second quarter 1985. Thus, Wood
County
nonfarm total employment increased by 860 over a year ago.
The Marshfield employment index rose by 0.9% when
compared to last year. This slight increase suggests sluggish
growth in employment for
Marshfield. The index was constructed
from 1980 census data and county employment figures.
Table 8 displays the Retailer Confidence
Index. Twenty-five
Marshfield
area retailers were interviewed to determine retail trade
conditions in the local region. When asked to compare sales and
store traffic to the previous year, retailers responded that
conditions have improved mildly. Expected sales and store
traffic three months from now were forecast to be somewhat
better than at present. A comparison with March 1986 conveys a
slightly less optimistic attitude about future trends.
Locally, labor demand has risen as indicated by the figures
contained in Table 9. The help
wanted index, with a 26 point gain, signals that labor demand
has significantly increased over last year. This index was
constructed from information taken from the Marshfield
News-Herald using 1980 as the base year.
Public assistance claims, which measure family financial stress
in Marshfield,
have increased by 1.3% over second quarter 1985 (Table
10). This is a lagging economic indicator. The small
percentage increase suggests that the Marshfield area economy has experienced little
change from the preceding year.
The unemployment claim data in Table 11
shows strong improvement for the Central Wisconsin area. This information is
collected on a regional basis by the~Job Service in Wisconsin Rapids. Five counties are included
in the totals. However, the data does provide insight into local
labor market conditions. Specifically, new claims have decreased
by 22.9% and total unemployment claims by 25.7% in the region
when compared to a year ago.
Lower mortgage rates, which provided a small stimulus in first
quarter 1986, played a much more significant role during the
second quarter due largely to improved weather conditions (Table
12). Even when seasonality is taken into consideration,
expansion is still evident. In four out of five measures of
residential activity, strong improvement was seen. Only
alteration permits declined from last year. The category showing
the most improvement was the estimated value of new home
construction, which was up by 162.4% or $1.53 million.
As can be seen in Table 13,
nonresidential construction displayed improvement over last
year. An area of considerable expansion was the estimated value
of new structures. This category will add almost $1 million to
the Marshfield
area capital stock. Furthermore, business alterations will
provide an additional increase of $.8 million to the value of
local facilities.
Financial statistics for the
Marshfield area
show that bank deposits and loans have risen (Table
14). Bank deposits increased by $10.1 million and bank loans
by $7.2 million over last year. The gain in deposits over loans
indicates the possibility of increased future economic activity.
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