heartglasses Forecasts can be such a bummer these days, and when you’re in the Long Beach area (long suffering from high unemployment and rising foreclosures) and the title of the latest UCLA Anderson Forecast Is “The Uncertain Economy” and you’re already depressed about your economic future, well, maybe you ought to not bother even reading it.

Then again, an uncertain future is better than a death sentence.

The UCLA Anderson Forecast’s third quarterly report of 2010 calls for “very sluggish growth for the foreseeable future.” California’s economy is “looking at a difficult period ahead as it attempts to generate not only the 1.3 million jobs lost during the recession, but also the additional jobs needed for new entrants into the job market over the past two and a half years,” the report states.

Of course, the UCLA Anderson Forecast notes that this comes as the “U.S. economy continues to recover from the recession.” The report states the nation’s unemployment rate will improve slightly, hitting 9.5 percent by 2011—barely a tenth of a point improvement. Translation: Replace the “roll” in the phrase “let the good times roll” with “inch,” and you’ve got the picture.

According to the report, the snail’s-pace recovery from the recession will be driven mostly by education, health care, exports and technology. Like most reports coming out lately, the Anderson report notes that real estate, though improving (or more precisely, not crashing like it has been in the past few years), will continue to be a drag.

UCLA Anderson’s report follows a real estate report the group issued last month, the “Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast Commercial Real Estate Survey and Index Research Project.” That report states that “optimism is returning” and “a distant glow of light at the end of the tunnel” can be seen in California’s office and industrial markets.

The positive report, which is well regarded by the region’s commercial real estate community, is particularly important for Long Beach’s hurting office market and the office sector in neighboring Orange County, which was slammed by high vacancy rates and plunging lease rates.

 [ Drilling down on unemployment ]

A side-by-side examination of unemployment data issued last week by the Employment Development Department—August versus July—shows some improvement in cities in the Greater Long Beach area over a month.

Unemployment in Bellflower was 13.5 percent, with a reported 5,000 people in that city unemployed in August, which is up a bit from a reported 13.2 percent in July. The opposite was the case in Cerritos, where unemployment reached 7.1 percent (2,000 unemployed) in August, compared with 7.4 percent the previous month. Compton’s unemployment rate also fell slightly—from 22.2 percent (8,400 unemployed) in July to 21.7 percent unemployed in August.

Downey’s 10.5 percent rate (5,600 unemployed) in August was a slight improvement from its 10.8% rate in July, while Paramount’s unemployment rate was 18.7 percent (4,700) in August, down a half-a-percentage point from 19.2 percent the previous month.

In Long Beach, the 14.2 percent rate (34,000) was a decent improvement from July’s 14.6 percent rate, with the apparent addition of 900 jobs in the city.

 So far, the UCLA Anderson forecast of a very slow, but steady, climb out of the recession seems to be holding true. But that is likely little comfort to the growing number of those dropping below the poverty line, particularly in California where more than 5.6 million people—one in seven—had incomes below the federal poverty line in 2009.

That’s according to Census Bureau data issued last week, which shows the rate of Californians with incomes below the federal poverty line rose in 2009 for the third straight year. The state’s 2009 poverty rate rose to 15.3 percent, which is the highest rate in 11 years.

“This is proof of just how hard the recession has hit Californians, and low-income Californians in particular,” Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan public policy research group, said in a statement following the release of the Census data. “It’s critical that we make smart policy choices to get the economy working for all of us.”

The federal poverty line varies by family size. For a family of four with two children it was $21,756 in 2009. California’s 15.3 percent poverty rate rose continued to be well above the 12.2 percent rate in 2006, before the recession began.

California’s inflation-adjusted median household income fell to $56,134 in 2009, down $2,716 from 2006, according to the Census data.

 [ Attracting South Korea to Port of Long Beach ]

Long Beach Harbor Commissioner Mike Walter joined Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and others last week on a trade mission to South Korea, lending support to efforts to expand commerce with a press release issued by the port says is its second-largest trading partner.

In 2009, 4 million metric revenue tons of imports came from South Korea through Long Beach, and 3.2 million metric tons of exports went to South Korea through Long Beach, according to the port.

“South Korea is a vital trading partner for California; both our economies will benefit from increased trade,” Walter said in the statement issued by the port. “As California emerges from the recession, strengthening relationships with our overseas trading partners is extremely important.”

Walter also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Port of Busan, South Korea, on behalf of the California Association of Port Authorities in support of environmental measures, security and economic development. Aside from his role on the Harbor Commission, Walter is also an economics professor at California State Long Beach.