Inland Empire Downturn Seen Lingering

The Inland Empire, plagued by rising joblessness and soaring real estate foreclosures, can expect little relief in 1994, economists at Chapman University said Thursday.

Neighboring counties will log a year of modest recovery and slight employment gains. But Riverside and San Bernardino counties are likely to see a second year of job losses as employers pare about 2,000 positions from their payrolls, said Esmael Adibi, director of the university’s Center for Economic Research.

The biggest factor in the two counties’ downturn will be a continuing decline in the construction industry, he said.

But Adibi, who presented the gloomy forecast to a group of Inland Empire business and civic leaders in Riverside, added that the two counties should begin seeing improvement by year’s end.

That the Inland Empire’s economy will trail its neighbors out of recession should be no surprise, Adibi said, as it trailed going in.

“Most of the people there who lost jobs in 1991 and 1992 were employed by companies in Orange and Los Angeles counties. It was only last year that they started losing local employment,” Adibi said.

All of the 1993 losses came in construction, down 16,600 positions, and manufacturing, which dropped 2,500 jobs. Not quite offsetting those declines was a gain of 16,500 jobs in retail, transportation, government and services.

Overall, the two counties posted a net loss of 2,600 jobs for 1993.

Continued weakness in construction will be the culprit, Adibi said. The Chapman economic center predicts a 2% decline in the value of new building projects in the two counties this year, to $2.2 billion.

On a further grim note, Adibi predicted that average housing prices in the two counties will drop 2.6% this year.