Predicting California Economy

Are we going up, down, or sideways?  Grab your crystal ball!

UCLA’s Anderson Forecast has just released a report that the California economy is on a two-track recovery.  San Diego and the coastal regions are pulling out of the recession ahead of the rest of the State.

Apparently the State’s economy is already getting better, the jobless rate averaged 12.6% in the first quarter.  Not good numbers, but UCLA’s crystal ball says that it hit it’s peak and will decline to the 10% mark until it dwindles in 2011.

Job growth is going to be the biggest factor, information technology, tourism, wholesale and retail trade, and health care and education all saw growth in the last year.  Education?  I didn’t realize that.  Thought they were cutting jobs, but happy to hear that is not the case.

Hopefully things are looking up.  Only a month or so ago I had a couple in my car from out of town.  The husband had just graduated from Brigham Young with a Masters in accounting and had taken the very first position he applied for at Sempra Energy, it was his dream job in his dream city.  Now, I can’t say how much he is making, but it was not a shabby paycheck.

Goes to say, it is better out there than I thought it was.

Apparently this is not the first time the State of California has experienced a two0-track recovery, in the ealrly 90s Southern california lagged the rest of the State because of the aerospace industry, which was shutting factories and laying off workers.

In the post-dot-com downturn that started in 2001, high-tech centers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley were the last to recover.

This time they predict it will be Inland California.

In any case, keep your fingers crossed for their crystal ball, it’d be nice for everyone to have a few extra bucks in their bank account!