California’s economy will be weighed down by the national recession until late 2009 and will begin to recover as construction rebounds and consumers start spending again, according to a UCLA Anderson Forecast released today.

The new quarterly forecast is the gloomiest in at least four years from Anderson economists, who said the pullback in spending by worried consumers – which they called “the spectacular panic of 2008″ – triggered a nose dive in employment reports the Daily News.

“The news from the economy is bad. The recession that we had previously hoped to avoid is now with us in full gale force,” David Shulman, a senior economist at the Anderson forecast, said in his assessment for the nation.

“Make no mistake, the global economy is in its first synchronized recession since the early 1990s.”

Jerry Nickelsburg, a senior Anderson economist who authored the California forecast, predicts that the state’s unemployment rate will jump from 7.6 percent in the third quarter to 8.9 percent by this time next year.

Unemployment nationwide is expected to jump from October’s 6.5 percent to 8.5 percent by late next year or early 2010.

That’s because of the financial crisis that erupted in September with startling speed, and consumers’ reflexive reduction in spending.

In California, Nickelsburg noted, the only employment sectors holding up are education, health care/human services, information, government, and leisure and hospitality, although he warned that the last two could soon falter.

Read more here: No relief in sight until consumers open their wallets