Noticias Telemundo features research published by Cal Lutheran’s Center for Economic Research & Forecasting and the Latino GDP Project. A report from the Latino GDP Project highlights newly released and record-setting population and labor force data. For the first time in history, one of every five people living in the United States is Latino. In 2024, the Latino labor… Read more

Dan Hamilton, Matthew Fienup, David Hayes-Bautista, Paul Hsu Introduction The April release of the 2025 U.S. Latino GDP Report revealed that the U.S. Latino GDP surged past $4 trillion for the first time. At $4.1 trillion, the 2023 U.S. Latino GDP is the world’s fifth largest GDP, larger than the entire economy of India. The… Read more

The Census Bureau’s recent June 2025 official U.S. population estimates indicate strength for the economy. This strength will accrue via various channels described in this essay. America is larger than previously understood. The estimated number of Americans as of July 1, 2023 rose by 1.9 million persons, and the previously estimated 2023 U.S. population growth… Read more

CERF’s U.S. Home Price forecast ranked single most accurate California Lutheran University economists Matthew Fienup and Dan Hamilton have been named as recipients of a 2024 Crystal Ball Award for the Fannie Mae Home Price Expectations Survey (formerly the the Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey and the Case-Shiller Home Price Expectations Survey). Fienup and Hamilton, both… Read more

February 20, 2025 (original version) March 11, 2025 (updated) The Socio-Economic Importance of Housing A year ago, I outlined a variety of social and economic impacts from housing in the essay “Housing and Growth”. A link to the full essay is here.  To review, I provide a list of the socioeconomic impacts here: Housing is… Read more

December 10, 2024 (original post) February 12, 2025 (updated) Introduction As CERF has previously documented, demographic and economic data indicate that Ventura County’s economy is stuck in a prolonged period of weakness. Data indicate that the county’s population peaked back in 2016 and has declined every year since. The civilian labor force peaked in 2012.… Read more

Soft Landing JP Morgan’s assessment that the Federal Reserve has achieved a soft-landing for the U.S. economy is incorrect. An economic soft landing is where the Fed utilizes their policy instruments to engineer a subtle economic slowdown that brings inflation down to its two percent target from a rate that was higher than two percent for a… Read more

The Inaugural U.S. Latina GDP Report builds directly upon six annual U.S. Latino GDP Reports released since 2018 as well as eight State and a dozen Metro Latino GDP Reports written in partnership with Bank of America. Those reports provide a factual view of the large and rapidly growing economic contribution of Latinos living in… Read more

A Personal Story I started tracking, modeling, and forecasting Ventura County (along with the San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles County economies) in 2000. The economic growth that was occurring in Ventura County from 1980 through 2007 would have made anyone proud. Not only was the growth explosive, but, it provided high-education jobs… Read more

Introduction The BEA published updated Ventura County Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures Thursday, December 7, 2023. The release provides revisions to all U.S. county-level GDP measures for the years from 2017 to 2021, and provides previously unreleased estimates for 2022. Strikingly, in 2022, Ventura County’s GDP contracted by 0.4 percent, whereas Los Angeles County’s economy… Read more