The Marshfield‑Wood county economy moved forward, albeit slow during Fourth Quarter 1996. The area has been growing steadily but surely since the early 1990s. The unemployment rate is at an amazingly low 3.0 percent, but total employment growth was a scant 1.3 percent. Similarly, industrial sector employment increased slightly, rising by just 1.2 percent. Most other economic indicators were positive for the local area. For example, bank statistics and unemployment claims data had encouraging results. 

     Table 7 shows that there was little change in the amount of industry sector employment. Manufacturing, trade, and construction payrolls are at the same approximate levels as they were last year. Government employment is actually estimated to be lower this time around. However, the services sector expanded quite nicely when it added about 700 jobs, or by 4.5 percent over the year. A very positive development is the Marshfield Employment Index which suggests that employment growth in the local community was stronger than the county as a whole. The healthy increase in the index occurred over the last year because of Marshfield's relatively greater reliance on service sector employment than Wood County. 

     Local merchants were upbeat in their assessment of retail activity during the recent Christmas selling season (Table 8). With regard to store sales, this group observed that customers were spending more freely than last year . However, the amount of store traffic was judged to be only slightly better than last year. When we asked them to assess the local economy and to forecast future retail activity their response was very positive about the situation. Local merchants hold the collective opinion that both sales and store traffic will be markedly ahead of last year's totals. 

     Help wanted advertising in the Marshfield area has been at elevated level for quite some time now (Table 9). For example, the index stood at 160 in early 1992 and rose to 211 by Fourth Quarter 1995. However, the index for this quarter did decline from last year's very high mark. A reading of 190 for Fourth Quarter 1996 indicates there are 1.9 jobs being advertised for every job listed in 1980, the base year. Thus, the index still remains at an encouragingly high level for Iocal residents. 

     Public assistance claims data for Wood County are only available on a total caseload basis due to a computer system change instituted by the state (Table 10). Over the course of the year the total caseload figure, which includes AFDC, MA and food stamps, remained stable at 2,603 claims? Another measure of local family financial distress is unemployment claims data (Table 11). Good news can be reported for this quarter. New claims fell by 8.6 percent on a weekly average basis. Likewise, total claims moved lower, declining by 5.3 percent.

     Residential construction data for the Marshfield data were off the pace of one year ago (Table 12).  Every category of activity registered a decline.  Residential permits issue dropped from 11 to 5 and the estimated value of construction fell from $1.1 million to $637 thousand.  The number of residential permits was 27 compared to 29 during fourth quarter 1995.  As one might expect the estimated value of the activity fell as well, from $242.6 thousand to $110.4 thousand.

     The same general downward trend held true for nonresidential construction (Table 13).  The number of permits issue was 14 with an estimated value of $525.3 thousand for fourth quarter.  The number of business alteration permits was 14 with an estimated value of $924.1 thousand. 

     Good news comes from the financial statistics for the Marshfield area
(Table 14).  Bank deposits expanded by 7.6 percent or by $21.9 million since last year.  Additionally, bank lending increased even more rapidly, rising by $24.3 million or 10.7 percent over the same period.  Both numbers are consistent with an expanding local economy. 

     Clark County data are presented in Table 15 and Table 16.  Clark County industrial sector employment is shown in Table 15.  Collectively, all five sectors grew by approximately 2.0 percent.  The largest changes came in the manufacturing and trade sectors, 5.1 percent and 4.6 percent respectively with services adding only 1.0 percent.  However, it is estimated that construction and government payrolls contracted from last year's levels.  Overall, the five sectors combined together to increase the Clark County employment base from 9,197 to 9,384.  In addition, the Clark County seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate from from 6.0 percent to 5.3 percent.  During the same period total employment rose from 15,032 to 15,185, or 1.0 percent.