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Adams, Wood, Portage, Marathon, Lincoln, Langlade, Vilas, Oneida, and Forest Counties
Contact the regional analyst: William (Bill) Brockmiller
Data
Dashboard contains statewide and regional analyses on current
issues coupled with easy to use data tools, all at your fingertips.
Regional
profile (PDF, 250KB) contains detailed labor market information for
the entire region.
Revised April 2005.
County Profiles contains detailed labor market information for individual counties within the entire state.
The North Central region is composed of nine counties;
starting from the south, Adams, Wood, Portage, Marathon, Lincoln,
Langlade, Vilas, Oneida, and Forest. The central counties of
Portage, Marathon, and Wood dominate the area with the highest
populations and heaviest concentrations of manufacturing
employment, as well as being the sites of two major insurance
companies and a world-class medical facility. The three dominant
counties in the region account for about 51 percent of the
region's population (compared to 58 percent just a few years
ago), just over one half of the region's labor force, and an
equal percentage of the jobs.
The counties in the North Central region are also home to some of the largest paper mills in the world, as well as several college campuses. In recent times, especially in the northern counties of the district, tourism has become a year-round industry, with the winter months nearly as important as the summer in many areas.
However, as tourism grows in importance, the once-solid sphere of paper manufacturing in the Wisconsin River Valley faces an uncertain future as overcapacity and nearly flat demand worldwide causes layoffs and permanent machine shutdowns. Rumors of plant closings are persistent enough to make even the optimistic uncomfortable.
In 2000, the estimated population of the North Central region was about 384,000, an increase of about 68,500 people from 1990 levels.
The North Central region has one characteristic that is not necessarily shared with all other areas or individual counties of the state: a certain variety of industrial elements which are more or less in balance throughout the year, and during the changing seasonal movements of the region. This is especially true of the central counties, where the main components of manufacturing, trade, service, and the remainder industries share about one quarter each of the job landscape. Also, manufacturing enterprise produce a greater variety of goods than one might expect from a relatively rural area. Along with the wider range of employment choices, this tends to act as a buffer in periods of economic fluctuation, a characteristic that seems to modify the grosser effects of employment slumps.
The linked PDF files require the Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have the most current version, you can download Acrobat Reader from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html
Updated:
July 07, 2008
Office of Economic Advisors
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