California Expecting Growth To Be Sluggish

California’s economy will grow sluggishly for the next year and a half before rebounding in 1997, University of California at Los Angeles economists predicted in a report released Wednesday.

The quarterly UCLA Business Forecasting Conference report estimated growth for non-farm state employment at 1.8 percent this year, 1.7 percent next year and 2.8 percent for 1997, about the same as the rest of the country.

California’s economy is a major part of the nation’s overall performance. The state would rank as the fifth-largest economy in the world if it were an independent country.

Nearly half of California’s job growth is expected to come in the service industries, particularly professional services and the motion picture business, the report said.

Since recession-plagued 1990, California’s job growth has been lagging behind the nation as a whole. But U.S. employment growth is expected to falter, so the state will likely catch up next year, according to the report.