Does anybody recognize these economic indicators?

• A national economy that has registered growth rates of less than 2 percent in three of the last four quarters;

• Employment down a full percentage point from last year;

• No growth in key Wisconsin industries;

• A noticeable deterioration in the business confidence index;

• And plant layoffs and closings that have brought some communities to a standstill.

While these statistics sound suspiciously like 2010, they’re actually culled from a 1985 Central Wisconsin Economic Research Bureau report on economic indicators found in the Stevens Point Area. I find them interesting because they do illustrate how much Wisconsin has changed during the past 25 years, and how much it has also stayed the same.

I think of my own cultural references of the time. As you can probably recall from last September’s editorial column (complete with my sophomore yearbook photo), I was in high school. At my school, a mix of white and blue collar families, a single manufacturing job was enough to support a family.

I remember going into Milwaukee and sweeping parking lots full of cars, where multiple shifts worked at the city’s many manufacturers. My own father worked as a product development engineer at Oster Corp., the appliance manufacturer in Glendale, a suburb of Milwaukee. It always intrigued me that all those appliances he brought home for us to try out — from blenders to egg cookers to foot baths — were actually made right there.

How that landscape has changed.

Even Wisconsin’s rural landscape is different. Remember, this was an era when our yellow-and-black license plates accurately proclaimed us “America’s Dairyland” as we had yet to be surpassed by California in milk production. I won’t quibble that we still can’t be America’s Dairyland, but the trips that I remember as a teenager are long gone. As the urban granddaughter of a dairy farmer, it never ceased to amuse me that all those cows across Wisconsin always seemed to “know” when it was milking time, congregating at the red barn doors and patiently waiting their turns.

Another landscape lost to history.

But my look back isn’t melancholy. I think history gives us a place to start in seeing just how far we’ve progressed. The same thing has happened this year at Corporate Report Wisconsin. We’ve enjoyed looking back into our archives, using them to compare and contrast the changes we need to make in our magazine. You’re seeing the results of that process in the redesign this issue, and in the continued tweaking we are doing with our editorial focus.

The ability to look back, reflect and move forward is an opportunity that I hope you all take advantage of. For us, it has been rewarding and enjoyable. We hope you enjoy the results of it with this issue … and all those moving forward.

By Laurie Arendt

Laurie Arendt is editor of CRW. She can be reached at crweditor@crwmag.com