In the California forecast, UCLA Anderson senior economist Jerry Nickelsburg says the state “will grow slower than the US and a slow recovery in jobs will leave unemployment at 12.1% for the year.” He adds, “The latter part of our forecast (through 2012) calls for health care, professional and business services, exports, construction and technology-related manufacturing sectors to generate a bit more robust growth in California.”

However, Nickelsburg notes, though the state will grow more rapidly in the following two years, job creation will not be fast enough to push the unemployment rate below double digits until 2012. “Unlike other deep recessions, the rapidity of the recovery, at least on the unemployment front, will be muted,” Nickelsburg writes.

The most recent forecast for the next three years is slightly weaker than suggested in the March report. Slow growth in 2010 is expected as government and construction continue to restructure and a reticent consumer nationwide does not boost imports to levels that would ignite the logistics industry. Specific to the construction sector, Nickelsburg describes a divided state, as coastal California recovers while inland California, devastated by the collapse of the real estate market, continues to languish.

UCLA Anderson economist Julia Thornton Snider calls her report on the L.A. economy “Emerging from Quicksand.” She says that Los Angeles, with its “natural deep-water harbor, large-scale logistics industry and export-oriented manufacturing, is well positioned to benefit from an export-driven expansion and we expect (Los Angeles) to recover more rapidly than California as a whole.” She says that the evidence is building that a recovery is under way, pointing out that exports turned the tide first and provide the most natural engine for recovery, with housing now showing signs of a recovery as well. Job growth is the necessary next step and the forecast says that it will start to revive this year, although unemployment will remain “painfully high” through 2012.