University of Central Florida economist, Sean Snaith has been tapped by the Wall Street Journal to serve on the newspaper’s prestigious economic forecasting panel, a statement by UCF said.
Selected for the first time to serve, Snaith joins 55 other economists who will be surveyed throughout the year to forecast economic indicators such as national unemployment, real GDP growth, housing starts, among others.
Snaith, who is director of the UCF’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness, first gained national prominence in 2008, when Bloomberg News identified him as one of America’s most accurate forecasters regarding the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate and the Fed Funds rate.
Snaith has said that in 2010 the housing market will continue to struggle, even as recovery in the U.S. is prolonged and unemployment remains persistently high. He has also said that interest rates will likely start increasing, as the Federal Reserve seeks to mop up some of the liquidity occasioned by the stimulus monies put into the economy, in the throes of the recession.
The consensus among economists is that growth in the U.S. would be muted in 2010.
Snaith had in his Halloween-themed forecast last October, projected that Florida’s unemployment rate will peak above 11 percent in 2010, as several sectors including, manufacturing and housing, will continue to struggle for longer that those at the national level. Moreover, employment in Florida, he said, will not return to pre-recession conditions before 2014.
