Forecasters have sharply lowered their expectations for job growth in the coming year after employers added just 38,000 jobs in May, according to The Wall Street Journal’s latest survey of academic, business and financial economists.
The Milwaukee staffing giant’s quarterly survey of employers in Los Angeles and Orange counties found that 15 percent plan to increase staff, 6 percent plan layoffs and 78 percent plan to keep staffing levels constant.
Business economists downgraded their expectations for GDP growth next year to 2.7 percent, but most expect the Federal Reserve to start raising interest rates this December.
“California’s ratio of debt service to General Fund revenues was 6.84 percent in 2014-15. . . The STO estimates this ratio will be 6.79 percent in 2015-16.”
Local employers say they plan to slow down their hiring and will likely lay off more people in the fourth quarter than earlier in the year. And they are also more cautious about hiring plans than their counterparts nationwide, according to a survey to be released Tuesday by Manpower Inc.
UCLA Anderson Forecast’s first quarterly report for the United States economy says that the nation “looks like an island of stability in a very volatile world.” The implication is that the U.S. is still on track for 3% GDP growth for the next two years, despite slow growth and currency devaluations throughout much of the rest of the developed world. Payroll employment is expected to increase at a 250,000-per-month pace and the national unemployment rate will hit 5% by year’s end. The California forecast is not much changed in the three months since the last release. Slightly weaker first and second quarters for 2015 are anticipated for California (when compared to the December report), which will be offset by stronger third and fourth quarters.
California’s population will continue to grow over the next 45 years, but very slowly, a new projection by the state’s demographers reveals, with Latinos and Asian-Americans providing virtually all growth and the white population shrinking dramatically.
Los Angeles County should add a total of 150,000 payroll jobs over the course of this year and next, bringing employment to record levels, according to the forecast from the LAEDC’s Kyser Center for Economic Research. What’s more, the unemployment rate should dip to 6.6 percent by the end of next year, its lowest level in eight years.
In the California forecast for September 2014, UCLA Anderson Senior Economist Jerry Nickelsburg writes, “The California economy is moving forward in an expansion from the depths of the Great Recession. But, even though the number of jobs is now higher than any time in the past, the state remains below its potential in output and employment. That we are entering the sixth year of expansion illustrates just how painfully plodding this recovery process has been.”
The third-quarter report, released Thursday, predicts that the state unemployment rate will sink to 5.7% by the end of 2016 from 7.4% now. That would continue to top the national rate, which UCLA economists expect will fall to 5.3% from its current 6.1%.
U.S. chief executives are slightly less positive about the economy’s growth prospects this year and fewer of them expect to increase their capital expenditures in the next six months, according to a quarterly by the Business Roundtable released on Tuesday.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Wednesday that the economy should grow at much stronger rates the rest of this year as the country overcomes the impact of a harsh winter. But Lew said millions of Americans continue to struggle as unemployment remains too high and economic growth is too slow.
It has been five years since the official end of that severe economic downturn. The nation’s total annual output has moved substantially above the prerecession peak, but economic growth has averaged only about 2 percent a year, well below its historical average. Household incomes continue to stagnate, and millions of Americans still can’t find jobs. And a growing number of experts see evidence that the economy will never rebound completely.
Nearly one in four Los Angeles area employers plan to hire more workers during the third quarter, the best showing in several years, according to a survey released today from Manpower Inc.
While the Bay Area will continue to lead the state, and the drought will hurt the recovery in the Central Valley, the UOP quarterly forecast says job gains will ripple throughout the state. Soon, California will have recovered all of the jobs lost to the recession, “a year earlier than previously forecast,” the forecast says.