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The third quarter economic results for central Wisconsin are summarized in the following.
The unemployment rates, while at historically low levels, rose
uniformly in the three county region.
Overall nonfarm employment growth was strong.
This is particularly true for Portage County.
Industrial sector employment growth was equally strong.
The main area of weakness, however, was manufacturing which lost
1,300 positions. Sales tax
figures for the region were positive.
Lastly, regional business leaders indicated little change in local
economic and industry conditions.
Unemployment rates were higher for all of
the reporting areas in Table 2.
It should be pointed out, however, that the rates are still very low
from a historical standpoint.
The unemployment rate was 4.0 percent for Marathon, 3.7 percent for
Portage, and 4.9 percent for Wood counties.
The labor force weighted unemployment rate was 4.2 percent for
central Wisconsin.
The overall unemployment rate for the state was 4.6 percent.
This nearly matches the 4.5 percent unemployment rate for the nation.
Table 3 gives
the estimates of total employment that are based on a survey of households.
Marathon
County payrolls expanded by 0.4 percent
during the year, Portage
County payrolls grew by an
even faster 2.3 percent. Wood
County, however, is estimated to have declined
by 2.8 percent over the past twelve months.
Because of this central Wisconsin posted a small
0.1 percent increase gain in total employment.
However, this result bested the state’s performance of a negative 0.7
percent change in payrolls.
During the same period the
U.S.
grew by a more robust 1.0 percent.
Table 4
presents estimates of nonfarm employment that are created from employer
based data. Overall, a 2.5
percent gain, or a 3,700 job increase, was registered for the three county
area. Manufacturing continues
to put a considerable amount of downward pressure on the employment figures,
declining by 1,300 positions from last year.
Greatly helping the employment situation was the growth in the
education & health services sector.
This sector added about 1,700 jobs to the three county economy
offsetting the decline in manufacturing.
Table 5 gives county
sales tax distribution figures.
This is a measure of trade activity in an area and trade activity tends to
be a good benchmark in terms of how the overall economy is performing.
In Portage
County the figure rose by
about 1.0 percent from last year’s mark.
Marathon
County
grew by nearly 6 percent and
Wood
County expanded by 22.6
percent. Thus, the three county
region registered a solid amount of growth in its trade activity.
Each quarter the CWERB surveys a group of
regional business people to ascertain their views on the economy (Table
6). When asked about recent
changes in national economic conditions they indicated that economic matters
have deteriorated. However,
they feel that the local economic conditions are unchanged from the June
2007 time frame. When we asked
them to forecast the change in national economic conditions they responded
by saying that conditions would be relatively unchanged over the next three
months. They also responded in
a similar way about local economic conditions and the prospects for their
particular industry. In other
words they foresaw little change taking place.
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