NEWS

Anticipating a Coronavirus Vaccine, UCLA Anderson Forecast Expects Robust Economic Recovery to Begin in Spring 2021

In California, the rebound will be led by tech, residential construction and logistics sector

Los Angeles (Dec 9, 2020) — The quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast anticipates positive economic news on the horizon.

After the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S., the Anderson Forecast’s March report was followed by two downward revisions, and the June and September releases charted the pandemic’s impact on the California and national economies. The December forecast offers hope of a robust recovery from the current recession, based on the assumption that mass vaccinations would clear a path toward a new, productive normalcy for many industries.

However, that good news is tempered by predictions of a rough winter, as economic growth remains stalled by measures intended to prevent rising spread of virus cases until vaccines become widely available. ” [...]

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CA FORECAST

The Economic/Pandemic Question: To Close or Not to Close? 

• - As 2020 draws to a close, labor markets in California are weaker than those in the U.S. overall.
• - Non-pharmaceutical interventions (such as mask mandates and restrictions on business operations) tend to be more restrictive in CA than elsewhere.
• - Across the U.S. in October 2020, states with more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions tended to have higher unemployment rates, though historical evidence suggests that more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions may not significantly affect economic activity in the near term and may help in the long term.
• - Looking to the future, the forecast for the state is for the technology sectors, residential construction, and logistics to lead the recovery, and for California post-pandemic to grow faster than the U.S.

Since the pandemic-induced recession began last March, we have said that the course of the pandemic, and the public health policy response to it, is critical to the economic forecast. As well, we have pointed out that we do not know what the future will bring with respect to the pandemic. What we do know is that the pandemic is raging across the [...]

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