Sacramento's economy will finally pick up steam this year.
But not too much.
That's the gist of the latest quarterly outlook from the University of the Pacific's Business Forecasting Center.
The forecast, released Thursday, calls for the four-county region to experience modest job growth in 2012, for the first time since the recession began in 2007.
"We've been trailing along behind, and I think we're going to start to see some positive growth," said economist Jeff Michael, the UOP center's director. "This is the year when some arrows point upwards again."
His forecast is in line with an increasing consensus among most experts that the economy has been steadily improving in recent months, even in hard-hit areas like Sacramento.
The region's unemployment rate fell to 10.9 percent in November, the lowest in 2 1/2 years. Much of the decline was attributed to better-than-expected holiday hiring. The December statistics will be released today.
Still, Michael said, Sacramento's problems are far from over. He doesn't see unemployment falling below 10 percent until early 2014.
The big issues remain the public sector and the real estate market, he said.
The government sector is likely to see more job cuts this year, although "I don't see anything drastic," he said.
The housing market seems to be stabilizing, and the construction sector can expect modest gains in employment this year. But it will be a long time before that sector is roaring again.
Stronger gains are expected in health care, which has emerged as a major growth industry in Sacramento.
A separate forecast, from California State University, Sacramento, and the Chartered Financial Analyst Society of Sacramento, is due next week. In a preview released Thursday, the forecast's authors said the region is stabilizing but the recovery remains slow.
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