UOP forecasts $199B Sac metro economy in 2030

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The economy of the Sacramento metro should more than double by 2030, predicts a new forecast from the University of the Pacific, accompanied by big gains in population, employment and especially personal income.

The latest state and regional forecast from the Stockton university's Business Forecasting Center anticipates a gross Sacramento metro product of $199.6 billion in 2030, more than twice the $83.9 billion of 2005. Other predictions:

- population will increase from 2.07 million now to 3.49 million in 25 years

- total personal income will quintuple, from $70.1 billion now to $186.3 billion in 2020 and $350.1 billion in 2030

- total establishment employment' will rise from 875,000 now to 1.46 million, with an unemployment rate of 4.3 percent in 2030.

Greater Sacramento should grow faster than the state, the center said, although California's overall economic outlook is still quite sunny.

'The long-run outlook for California's economy is strong and by 2030 real gross state output should exceed $3.7 trillion,' said Sean M. Snaith, director of the center, in a statement released Wednesday. 'Some of the highest-growth regions in the state will be found in California's Central Valley as economic muscle will be added to the agricultural backbone of this region.'

Shorter term, the center predicts that:

- California's payrolls will grow at 1.6 percent annually from now through 2007
- state unemployment will hold steady at 5.8 percent
- California housing starts will hold steady this year and start to fall off in 2006-07, as mortgage rates rise. The current housing market, the center said, resembles "a soufflé -- a delicate combination of many factors, threatening to deflate with any change in environment or ingredients."

The center was founded last year. Part of the Eberhardt School of Business, it produces quarterly economic forecasts of the United States, California and 11 metropolitan areas from Sacramento to Fresno and the San Francisco Bay Area.

More information from the report is available at forecast.pacific.edu.