The future lies ahead

The UCLA Anderson Forecast met yesterday, this time in Korn Hall in the Anderson complex.  Despite claims of a great shortage of campus meeting spaces for conferences, the Forecast always seems to find a location, as the photo above from yesterday's event indicates.  It has sometimes met off campus - downtown, for example - to try to attract participants who can't deal with the traffic to UCLA.  Traffic, however, is a problem the UCLA Grand Hotel (aka conference center) can't solve. Indeed, the theme of the Forecast event, apart from the economic outlook, dealt with infrastructure issues in the local area, including transportation. 

Generally, the forecast itself was reasonably bright: an acceleration of growth and the California unemployment rate and the U.S. unemployment converging to around 5% by the end of 2016.  Although the impact of that growth, if it occurs as predicted, on the state budget would be positive, the Forecast does not routinely connect its general economic numbers to state fiscal affairs.

A summary of the forecast is at http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-anderson-forecast-national-economy-out-of-the-doldrums-unemployment-continues-to-declin