NEWS

Slow Growth But No Recession Predicted for U.S. Economy

LOS ANGELES (September 25, 2019) – Stopping just short of predicting a recession in the U.S. through its 2021 forecast horizon, the UCLA Anderson Forecast, in its third quarterly report of 2019, expects the national economy to slow to 0.4% in the second half of 2020, before rebounding to 2.1% in 2021. Given the slow growth rate nationally and the weakness in the housing market, the Forecast expects California's unemployment rate to rise to an average of 5.1% in the fourth quarter of 2020. For the entire years of 2020 and 2021, the unemployment rate in the state is expected to average 4.6%.

The latest UCLA Anderson Forecast for the nation opens by acknowledging a global economy in flux, taking into account the U.S. trade war with China, President Trump's criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell [...]
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CA FORECAST

THe California Growth Spurt Continues to Roll On, But for How Long? 

In the California Report of late, we have been following two trends. First, California unemployment rates, particularly in the largest job markets in the State are extremely low. Therefore, it follows that the rate of hiring should slow down. Not only has that not happened, but the rate of hiring for non-farm payroll jobs has increased by 0.2% from 2018’s hiring rate. However, the growth in the labor force and the growth in total employment, which includes non-payroll and agricultural jobs, has slowed dramatically. Those data indicate that the March benchmark revision will temper the payroll job growth somewhat, but the trend ought not to change. Second, the pace of growth in the U.S. is slowing. GDP in the second quarter of 2019 came in at only 2.0% and in the first quarter the 3.1% growth was supported by unsold goods (inventory accumulation). Not so in California. GDP growth in the first seven months of the year was running at a 4% annual rate [...]
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