The Marshfield-Wood county area economy continues to move forward, albeit at a modest pace.  Most of the economic information presented in the report points to that conclusion.  Perhaps the most interesting results of this quarter's report are the data on residential construction.  Low interest rates and a stable economy have helped to produce this quarter's robust results.

     Wood county industrial sector employment increased by a respectable 1.6 percent from December 1997 (Table 7).  Manufacturing gained 200, services 500, and trade 100 positions respectively.  Construction payrolls remained at the same level as a year ago.  Lastly, government employment is estimated to have decreased by 100 jobs.  The CWERB Marshfield Employment Index rose 2.2 percent.  This barometer of local employment conditions suggests that Marshfield employment increased by about 2 percent since last year.

     Retailer confidence in Marshfield is displayed in Table 8.  Local merchants who are on the panel believe that sales were moderately better than a year ago.  However, traffic was judged to be only slightly higher in 1997.  With regard to the future our group says that sales and traffic will be incrementally higher than a year ago.  Thus, retail sales in the area are expanding at a modest pace and reflect the overall performance of the local economy.

     Help wanted advertising for the Marshfield area increased by 13 points or nearly 7 percent from 1997 (Table 9).  This is a good sign for local residents.  Meanwhile the national index was virtually unchanged from a year ago.  The index for Marshfield suggests there are approximately 2 jobs being advertised for every job in the base year of 1980.

     One measure of local family financial distress is public assistance claim data (Table 10).  On a monthly average basis total claims fell from 2,428 to 2,463, or 1.5 percent from 4th Quarter 1997.  The data are for all of Wood county and represents payments made for AFDC, MA, and food stamps.  Another measure of financial distress is unemployment claim data (Table 11).  New claims on a weekly average basis fell from 97 to 92, or 5.2 percent.  More good news can be reported with regard to total claims.  The number for total unemployment claims dropped from 296 to 272, or by 8.0 percent.  These numbers give us a hint as to the state of the local economy's health.

     Residential construction in the Marshfield area was very robust during 4th Quarter 1998 (Table 12).  Residential permits issued reached 15 and they had an estimated value of $2.1 million.  The number of housing units rose from 6 to 17 in the year over comparison.  Further, residential alteration permits rose by 60.9 percent and the value of this alteration activity climbed by a huge 84.8 percent.

     As always we remind the reader that nonresidential construction is presented without percentage changes due to the volatile nature of this activity.  The number of permits issued reached 12 in 4th Quarter and the value is estimated at $3.8 million (Table 13).  The number of alteration permits was 10.  Further, the value of this construction is estimated to be $910.6 thousand.  In sum, new construction was generally higher than last year, however alteration activity was lower than the previous year's mark.

     Financial statistics for the next four quarters will have no previous comparison point because of bank merger activity in the local area (Table 14).  This year's figures for bank lending and deposits are much higher than last and are not valid for comparison purposes.  Moreover, repeated attempts to receive pre-merger figures from the merged institutions were unsuccessful.  At this juncture all that can be reported is that deposits are now $346.4 million and loans $271.0 million in the local area.

     Table 15 and Table 16 present Clark county economic data.  Industrial sector employment shows manufacturing gaining 2.5 percent, trade 1.9 percent, construction 7.9 percent, and government 0.4 percent.  Only services contracted, by an estimated 1.3 percent.  Further, the data indicates the unemployment rate declined from 6.3 to 5.9 percent over the past twelve months.  However, it should also be reported that total employment contracted by an estimated 3.5 percent from a year ago.