IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
California should see steady job growth between now and the end of 2017, according to a report released Thursday.
Statewide employment should grow 2.4 percent this year, 2.2 percent next year and 1.5 percent in 2017, according the economic forecast released Thursday by the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.
If that prediction proves to be correct, the state’s unemployment rate will move closer to the national average, which was 5.5 percent in February.
Higher consumer demand, coupled with growth in construction, the automobile industry and general business investment, will power the state’s economy during the next few years, according to the forecast.
California’s unemployment rate is expected to stay around 6.5 percent this year and drop to 5.1 percent by the end of 2017.
The state economy should grow faster than the U.S. economy in the time covered in the report, even with the recent west coast port dispute that slowed California’s economy somewhat, according to the forecast.
Nationally, the U.S. economy will grow about three percent during the next two years, despite slow growth in other countries and various currency devaluations in the developed world. The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to drop to five percent by the end this year.
The U.S. economy “looks like an island of stability in a very volatile world,” the forecast stated.
