Professor Jay Prag Issues His Economic Predictions for 2014: California’s Economy
On January, 7 Jay Prag of the Peter F. Drucker and Matatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management expressed his opinions in forecasting the future of the economy. Today, we’ll be looking into Prag’s crystal ball and see what he believes is coming for the state of California in 2014.
According to Prag, there is plenty good news on the horizon for Cali, mostly due to the state’s reputation for technological innovation and status as a successful start-up incubator. He anticipates that tech-businesses will to continue to be a growth engine for the Sunshine State. That coupled with the state’s reputable university system will do California well in 2014.
Statewide unemployment statistics have also shown that unemployment fell to 8.5-percent at the end of 2013 and will probably fall to around 8-percent during 2014. However, Prag notes that the decline in unemployment isn’t necessarily all positive, as California will continue to lose their homegrown scholars and job candidates from every part of the state that isn’t Silicon Valley. The rest of the state continues to hurt due to California’s infamously unfriendly reputation toward business.
Prag explains that some of the decline in unemployment will also be due to the loss of unemployment benefits that are forcing people into find jobs. While that is a good thing in some ways (a job’s a job after all) but these jobs aren’t the ones that are considered high-paying or glamorous.
“Presumably those who were receiving unemployment insurance for a long time were hoping to find high paying jobs to replace jobs that disappeared during the recession,” said Prag.
Next week we’ll look at what Prag believes is in store for the US economy moving.
