UCLA economist predicts slump to continue into 2012
By Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee
California’s barely visible economic recovery should crawl along for another year or longer, putting off any meaningful gains until sometime in 2012, according to the latest projections from UCLA.
The quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast, to be released today, says statewide unemployment won’t fall below 10 percent until the last three months of 2012.
Despite the bleak outlook, UCLA senior economist Jerry Nickelsburg dismissed speculation that the economy is heading into a double-dip recession.
“California’s growing, but it’s growing slowly,” he said in an interview. “It doesn’t follow that slow growth means you turn in a different direction.”