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news:
Long Beach economic
outlook promising
By Sé J. Reed
Online Forty-Niner
As the experts
hem and haw about the delicate condition of the U.S. economy,
concerned Southern Californians can set their worries aside.
Cal State Long
Beach's Office of Economic Research predicted Thursday that
despite the growing concerns about the national outlook, Long
Beach and the surrounding areas will avoid slipping into a
recession.
The Seventh Annual
Economic Forecast of Southern California was a presentation
of the conclusions generated by CSULB faculty and student
research, forecasting the economic status of the nation, the
Southern California region and the City of Long Beach.
"This truly
has been a booming economy," said Joseph Magaddino, chairman
of the department of economics, of the steadily growing economy
of the past decade. "If you wanted to find a period that
resembled this, you'd have to go back to the 1960s."
The economic growth
spurt seems to have waned however, as the signs of recession,
such as declining worker output and rising interest rates,
have been popping up in statistics. Despite this, the CSULB
research concludes that a recession is not a sure thing.
"The U.S.
will narrowly avoid a recession," Magaddino said. Further,
investment, which has been down on the national level, "should
recover by the year's end, but not with the double-digit growth
of before."
But although the
general outlook of the forecast was optimistic, it was not
without its negative side.
"There will
be a slowdown in the rate of employment growth," said
Lisa Grobar, the director of the Economic Forecast Project.
"This slowdown will be perceptible and will be noticeable."
Los Angeles County
employment growth rates are expected to plateau at about 1.5
percent for the next 2 years. Orange County rates are better,
predicted to be about a 3 percent growth rate this year, but
falling to 2.2 percent in 2002.
The slowdown predicted
for the Southern California region will not be as significant
as the one predicted for the nation as a whole, however.
The slowing economy
is a result of many factors, Magaddino said, including the
stock market corrections resulting from the bursting of the
tech stocks bubble in 2000. As a result, consumer confidence
in the market has fallen.
Consumer consumption
has also been growing faster than personal income, which translates
to a heavy reliance on borrowed money. Family sales are strong,
however, as is refinancing, Magaddino said, so "everything
isn't bad news for the consumer."
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