LANSING – As a sign of the continuing and deepening economic downturn the state is suffering, a University of Michigan economics group has forecast a loss of 239,000 jobs in 2009.

That number is nearly twice the number of job losses forecast by the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics six months ago at its annual forecast conference in Ann Arbor.

The number is also nearly 50,000 more than the 191,000-job loss in 2009 RSQE forecast in January at the Revenue Estimating Conference in Lansing. The latest estimate was released earlier this month by RSQE.

On Monday, the Senate Fiscal Agency also released an updated economic, revenue and budget review that repeated many items it reported earlier in the month. However, the latest SFA document said the 150,000-drop in overall payroll employment in the last four months exceeded the decline of 121,000 jobs during 11 months in 2001. The 150,000 jobs decline also is 20 percent of all the jobs lost in the state since June 2000.

While the state has lost 150,000 jobs in four months, the state has lost jobs for nine consecutive months, the SFA said.

The latest SFA document also confirms an anticipated general fund revenue shortfall for the current year of between $700 million to $850 million. Last week it was reported that officials were working with an estimate of solving a budget problem of about $785 million for the current year.

The document also said based on the current economic situation Governor Jennifer Granholm’s 2009-10 budget proposal would have to “significantly adjusted.”

The RSQE forecast said the state had seen jobs losses approaching 1 percent a month. For the first quarter of 2009, RSQE anticipated that the percentage of job losses would average 12 percent for the year, but that figure should begin to improve until the quarterly job loss is 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter.

For the entire year, the RSQE estimated job losses of 5.9 percent.

“The roots of the problem are evident: a national downturn that by our accounting will be the most severe of the post-war recessions, the domestic auto industry in a mess; and homebuilding activity operating at historic lows,” the RSQE forecast said.

However, the RSQE forecast was a little more optimistic about 2010 than it had been earlier. In the latest forecast, it expected the state would lose 12,500 jobs in 2010, with fractional job growth beginning to assert itself by the end of 2010.

In November the RSQE estimated the state would lose 49,400 jobs in 2010. That forecast improved to a loss of 24,000 in 2010 that RSQE made in January.

The job loss will drive personal incomes down by 2.1 percent during 2009, the RSQE estimated. Personal income growth could return to positive territory in 2010 but only increasing by .1 percent, the forecast said.

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