Fourth Quarter 1994 economic performance in the Wausau area was quite good. The unemployment rate is now down to 4.8 in the county. Total employment grew by 1 percent to 63.4 thousand. However, industrial sector employment expanded by nearly 3.0 percent from last year or 1,600 positions. Retailers could hardly be more upbeat about their sales and store traffic this quarter. Further, residential constriction activity and especially the financial statistics were above expectations.

     As always not all economic indicators are positive. Help wanted advertising was slightly off pace of a year ago. Public assistance and unemployment activity took a turn for the worse and as a result, most of our measures of family financial distress were higher than a year ago. 

     Good news for the Wausau area is presented in Table 7. Industrial sector employment rose by 2.8 percent from last year when aggregate employment increased from 56.9 to 58.5 thousand jobs. Trade and service payrolls expanded the most rapidly climbing by 1,100 and 500 respectively. Also, the government sector increased by 400 but this was offset by contractions in manufacturing and construction of 200 jobs each. 

     Retailer confidence in the Wausau area has been soaring since the first part of 1991 (Table 8). Happily this quarters results continue the trend. Total sales and store traffic compared to one year ago are deemed by our panel to be significantly better than a year ago. The merchants also forecast that future sales and store traffic three months from now will be much higher than last year's activity levels. The results of the survey suggest that the Wausau retail scene was strong during the crucial Christmas selling season. 

     Help wanted advertising in the Wausau area tumbled ever so slightly from Fourth Quarter 1993 (Table 9). The index declined from 212 to 204 or 3.8 percent. However, we should remember there are still 2.04 times as many advertisements today as compared to Fourth Quarter 1980. Moreover, help wanted advertising has been trending upward since late 1991. Suggesting that over this recent period there has been a steady improvement in the local labor market. 

     Our barometers of local family financial distress are given in Table 10 and
Table 11. The number of new applications on a monthly average basis rose from 15 to 17 or 13.3 percent. With regard to total caseload, it remained unchanged from last year at 77. Unemployment claim activity rose sharply from 312 to 380 on a weekly average basis. Over the same period total unemployment claims rose from 1,586 to 1,687. Thus, our barometers in Tables 10 and 11 show that there has been some increase in the amount of distress. 

     So far higher interest rates have not dampened new home construction in the Wausau area (Table 12). This fact says a great deal about how strong the economic growth has been in the area and the lagged effect of higher interest rates. Residential permits issued, estimated value of new homes, and the number of housing units rose dramatically by 15, 64, and 102 percent since Fourth Quarter 1993. Contrary to the trends at the national level where alteration activity is booming and new construction is lagging, alteration activity here is well off the pace of last year. Residential permits issued and their estimated value plummeted by 27 and 21 percent. 

     Nonresidential construction in the Wausau area is not given with percentage changes due to the natural volatility of business investment. Table 13 shows that the number of new permits issued was 11 with an estimated value of $2.4 million. Business alteration activity was as follows. There were 25 permits issued with an estimated value of $2.7 million during Fourth Quarter 1994. 

     Financial statistics in Table 14 were very impressive for this past quarter. Bank deposits rose by about $166 million from last year or by nearly 16 percent. Even more dramatic than this, bank lending soared upwards by $182 million or 23.0 percent. Please note that bank merger activity in the Wausau area has taken place. The numbers for Fourth Quarter 1993 and 1994 are comparable because this activity has been factored into each year's totals. Thus, the presented year over changes are valid and useful in assessing local economic conditions.