During 4th quarter 1992 the area economy remained stable and solid. The total number of people working increased by 500 or 1.5 percent. The unemployment rate, while rising to 6.1 percent, is still at a reasonably low level. Further, the rise in the unemployment rate is due more to a rapidly rising labor force than to a contraction in the number of people employed. 

     Other measures of economic activity suggesting that the local area remained stable include a constant number of nonfarm workers, an increase in the number of manufacturing jobs, positive responses to the retailer confidence survey, a decline in the number of new applications for public assistance and unemployment compensation, and brisk residential construction activity. 

     Table 7 presents 4th quarter's industrial sector employment figures. Manufactures trade, and government expanded modestly by 1.7, 4.3, and 1.8 percent or approximately 100, and 100 jobs respectively. Services and construction were the only classifications to register decline, 3.2 and 13.2 percent. This represents a loss of 320 jobs in the service sector and 100 j in construction compared to last year. In sum, there are now 29,320 persons employed in them industrial sector categories, an aggregate growth rate of about 0.5 percent. 

     Retailer confidence in Stevens Point, while remaining upbeat and positive, was somewhat lower than during third quarter (Table 8). When local merchants were asked about recent changes in store traffic and sales, they reported that matters had improved mildly from the previous year. addition to this information, sales tax data, recently released by the state government, suggests that local buying activity was 7 percent higher in 1992 than in 1991. When asked to forecast future, this group of local merchants expected that sales and store traffic would remain approximately the same levels as in the previous year. 

     The local labor market is proxied by the help wanted advertising index in
Table 9. employment advertising fell 23 percent or 42 points from 4th quarter 1991. The U.S., for the fir time in many quarters, showed a slight improvement in its advertising index, rising by five points. Thus, even though advertising is off last year's pace, there are still 1.38 jobs being advertised every one job advertised in 1980. 

     Local family financial distress is depicted in Table 10 and Table 11. New applications for pub assistance, on a monthly average basis, declined from 236 in 1991 to 178 in 1992, a contraction 24.6 percent. The total monthly average caseload rose sharply from 1354 in 4th quarter 1991 1862 during 4th quarter 1992, an increase of 37.5 percent. In contrast, new unemployment on a weekly average basis went from 68 to 52 over the course of the year, declining by percent. Total unemployment claims remained quite stable, rising only slightly from 165 to 1 over the same time period. 

     Table 12 presents residential construction in the greater Stevens Point area. The n of residential permits issued, the estimated value of new residential construction, the number new housing units, and the estimated value of residential alteration permits issued all exceed 4th quarter 1992 levels by 13.7, 25.0 50.6, and 110.4 percent respectively. Only the number alteration permits issued remained virtually unchanged from last year, falling from 133 to 131. stated in previous reports, the construction scene in our area continues to boom. 

     Because of its singular nature, nonresidential construction is presented, as always, without percentage changes (Table 13). This type of capital investment tends to be quite volatile, i.e. the figures tend to fluctuate greatly, therefore period to period comparisons are not necessarily meaningful. The totals for 4th quarter are as follows: new nonresidential permits issued, 12; the estimated value of new nonresidential construction, $2225 thousand; nonresidential alteration permits issued, 56 and the estimated value of nonresidential alteration permits, $831 thousand. 

     Financial statistics for the area are listed in Table 14. A great deal of stability is exhibited in these numbers. Bank deposits rose by $2.4 million from last year, or by approximately 1 percent. Bank lending at our sample institutions expanded by $4.1 million or about 2.0 percent.