Daily Forecast Update: March 19, 2010
March 19, 2010
By Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist 
- NAR's monthly official forecast as of March 4th (PDF: 15K)
- GDP 2010 Q1: +2.5%
- GDP 2010 Q2: +1.8%
- GDP 2010 Q3: +2.3%
- Unemployment rate by the mid-2010: 10.2% (up)
- Average 30-year fixed mortgage rate by the mid-2010: 5.4%
What does today's data mean for REALTORS® and consumers?
- Job cuts have been very severe this recession in nearly every part of the country. But a few areas have held on much better. Fargo and Bismark have unemployment rates below 5 percent. On the opposite end, few farming communities in California registered an unemployment rate over 20 percent.
- Among large cities, the Washington D.C. region has been doing relatively well with an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent, while Detroit and Flint are suffering with 16 percent unemployment rates.
Metropolitan Area Employment
- Since the government provides local job market information with a two month lag time, today’s release refers to January 2010. Nearly all metro markets shed jobs, some quite severely.
- There were few markets and states where jobs were actually added over the past 12 months. They were: Alaska and North Dakota, so if you can handle the cold, there are jobs.
Furthermore, the job creating cities were actually small towns, including:
o Panama City, Florida
o Bloomington, Indiana
o Elizabeth, Kentucky
o Barnstable, Massachusetts
o Lansing, Michigan
o Hattiesburg, Mississippi
o St. Joseph, Missouri
o Portsmouth, New Hampshire
o Ocean City, New Jersey
o Ithaca ,New York
o Jacksonville, North Carolina
o Sandusky, Ohio
o State College, Pennsylvania
o Killeen, Texas
o Kennewick and Yakima , Washington
• The only large city to create jobs was the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
For more information, consult the Bureau of Labor Statistics web site.
This is one in a series of commentaries by the Research staff of the National Association of REALTORS®. Read more commentaries >
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