UCLA Economic Forecasters Expect Tepid Recovery Through 2012

“UCLA’s economic forecasters expect the rest of 2012 to feel like a Jeep ride through thick mud: “slow and bumpy.”

While the housing market has shown signs of bottoming out, the university’s economists aren’t ready to bank on it. Instead, they’re more certain that 2013 and 2014 will be the growth years, according to the quarterly economic forecast released Wednesday by UCLA’s Anderson School of Business.

“Consequently, our forecast continues to give residential construction the dubious honor of standing with government as the two sectors providing a drag on the 2012 recovery,” writes senior economist Jerry Nickelsburg.

California’s economy will see continued slow, steady gains in employment through the year’s end but won’t see single-digit unemployment until 2013.

“The unemployment rate will hover around 10.6 percent through 2012,” Nickelsburg wrote in the forecast. “Unemployment will fall through 2013 and will average 9.7 percent, approximately the same as our last forecast. In 2014, we expect the unemployment rate to drop to 8.3 percent, a percent higher than our U.S. forecast.”

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