ECONOMY: Inland region is on the mend, experts declare

Source: The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.儲存Oct. 29--Most of the pieces that make up Inland Southern California's economic puzzle are falling into place, but it will take at least a few more years until the area regains the jobs it lost from the recession, a forecast delivered Tuesday, Oct. 29 found.Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles-based team of economic analysts, told a Riverside audience that "while it's not yet time to party," there are some positive indicators for Riverside and San Bernardino county residents. Jobs are coming back, homes are recovering some equity and people are getting more into a spending mode.The economic forecast was presented in a partnership with UCR, and the team was led by Beacon's founding partner, Christopher Thornberg. In 2005, Thornberg correctly anticipated that rising home prices that were floating the Inland economy to new heights at that time were probably not sustainable, and that a rough landing for the housing bubble could well trigger a recession.And, in October 2008, Thornberg told a San Bernardino audience that the recession would be a deep one, except that he underestimated the depth. He predicted unemployment would top 12 percent in the Inland area by the summer of 2010. It actually hit 15 percent.Tuesday the news was better. Jordan Levine, who delivered the forecast for the Inland area, said California, despite its reputation as a state that isn't friendly for businesses, is actually a success story."There are still issues to work out, but we're moving forward," Levine said. "There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic."Levine said the Inland Empire was "a little slower out of the gate," but the forecast is encouraging. The unemployment level, reported at 10.4 percent in August, should drop to 8.8 percent by the end of next year, to 7.7 percent by the fourth quarter of 2015 and below 7 percent by early 2017.The region lost more than 180,000 jobs between the peak of June 2006 and July 2010 and has regained only about 34,000 of those jobs. Beacon's forecast suggests the area won't get back to that 2006 peak until early in 2017.Recent state reports have showed sluggish job growth, but Levine and other economists say they believe California has been underreporting some jobs. Current conditions could actually be better than they appear.Also, he noted that higher-skilled workers are ending up in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, with 26 percent of Inland residents commuting to jobs there. In a perfect economic universe, most of those people would have jobs much closer to their homes."Ultimately the future of the economy in Inland Southern California does lie with those skmini storagelled jobs," Levine said. "Most highly trained people commute, but if there were jobs here, they could tap into that."Data indicates that Inland residents are spending more. Taxable sales have increased by 6.4 percent in the last 12 months, and the sales tax data reported to the State Board of Equalization show that spending is within 1.8 percent of where it was before the recession.Much of that is traced to an improved residential housing market. Levine predicted that Inland Southern California will regain its status as one of the growth regions of the country again. The region currently ranks fourth in price appreciation among California's metropolitan areas.And no let-up is anticipated. Existing home prices will continue growing year-over-year in the 20 percent range through the first half of 2014, then in the 10 percent to 20 percent range through the first quarter of 2015, Beacon's economists predict."We are in recovery mode," he said of real estate.Thornberg said that a full recovery from the recession has been stymied because the federal government has produced very little direct action in the last three years, just a string of eleventh-hour dramas.Banks are lending less because the full reach of the Dodd-Frank law, which brought new regulation to the financial sector, has not been implemented and its effects are unclear. Developers who might be hiring thousands of construction workers are on the sidelines for similar reasons."We should be doing better and we would if we could get our leaders to understand what's going on," Thornberg said. "Companies aren't investing as much as they could; if they did, they could be making money hand-over-fist. They're not investing because they're asking 'When is there going to be another recession?' Unknowns can really slow an economic recovery down."Thornberg added that most job creation comes from existing businesses. Inland officials should concentrate on that and not try to create a new class of industry. There is, after all, only one Silicon Valley.He introduced a panel of academics who discussed the end of redevelopment areas in California by suggesting that it isn't a good idea for neighboring cities to compete for jobs."It's not us versus them," Thornberg said. "If Riverside steals a business from San Bernardino, we're not better off."Follow Jack Katzanek on Twitter: @JackKatzanek and check his blog on pe.com/business. Follow Debra Gruszecki on Twitter @DebInPalmSprngs and check her blog on pe.com/businessCopyright: ___ (c)2013 The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.) Visit The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.) at .PE.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage