Ongoing weakness in the housing market will push the national economy to the brink of recession, but growth in other areas should put the country back on a slow road to recovery by 2009, according to an economic forecast released today.

The quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast predicts growth in the gross domestic product of just over 1 percent for the fourth quarter of 2007 and first quarter of 2008. That growth is just above the traditional definition of a recession - two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product.

California's economy is also likely to escape recession narrowly, the report stated.

However, San Diego County's economy is at greater risk of recession than the rest of the state, one Anderson economist, Ryan Ratcliff, said in an interview Monday. Layoffs in construction, real estate and home lending are pushing up unemployment rates, he said.

"The real estate-related drag has been particularly bad in San Diego," Ratcliff said. "San Diego has really gotten a bad double whammy from a major contraction in building."

From July 2006 to July of this year, construction jobs in the county fell by 3,500, according to the California Employment Development Department. In addition, jobs in the county's real estate rental and leasing businesses decreased by 1,700 year over year.

San Diego County is also losing jobs shed by mortgage companies that issued loans to customers with "subprime," or poor credit. Accredited Home Lenders Holding Corp., based in Carmel Mountain Ranch, recently announced 1,600 layoffs, including nearly 200 from its headquarters.

"Everybody thinks that Orange County is the epicenter of the subprime crisis as it relates to job loss, but San Diego is right up there as well," Ratcliff said.

Nationwide, the forecast predicts that growth will remain "tepid" for the remainder of 2008 and return to 3 percent in 2009, said David Shulman, senior economist for the forecast. However, he warned that the economy is so precarious, it could be easily knocked into a recession.

"Of course, when the economy slows to a 1 percent pace, it runs the risk of falling into an actual recession, just as when an airplane's velocity dips down to its 'stall speed' and falls out of the sky," Shulman wrote in the report.

The declining housing market could remain at the heart of the nation's economic woes for some time.

Shulman lowered his forecast for U.S. housing starts to an annual rate of about 1 million to 1.1 million, down from a range of 1.2 million to 1.3 million.

That outlook is less optimistic than one presented Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors, which projected that construction of new homes will fall to 1.4 million this year, from 1.8 million last year.

Shulman also expects U.S. housing prices to plunge 10 percent to 15 percent before they start to recover, sometime in 2009.

"The small recent minimal declines represent not the end, but rather the beginning of what will be a very painful decline," he wrote.

Housing woes have already started to affect consumer spending and are expected to keep doing so through 2008, the forecast said.

Auto sales will reach only 15.7 million units in 2008 - the lowest rate since 1998, Shulman predicted. Housing-related purchases, such as furniture and appliances, were also expected to decline.

Still, strong global demand for U.S.-produced goods and reduced domestic demand for imports should fuel economic growth of about 1.8 percent for 2008, according to the report. Corporate investment in software and equipment was also predicted to fuel modest growth.

Other key factors regarding the economic slowdown could be further credit tightening, which could discourage corporate investment, and the willingness of foreign investors to hold dollar-based assets, the report concludes.

Ratcliff said that the state's slow growth, while it doesn't match the definition of recession, could look much like a recession.

"We still don't expect to see a recession, but the line between the two (slow growth and recession) is getting finer and finer all the time," Ratcliff said.

In July, California's unemployment rate rose to 5.3 percent, from 4.8 percent in July 2006. San Diego County's unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent, from 4.6 percent in July 2006.

State unemployment has gone up a half-percentage point since the beginning of the year, while national unemployment has remained "flat," Ratcliff said. Unemployment nationally was 4.6 percent in July, the same as in January.

California's housing-related job losses could push the state's unemployment rate as high as 5.9 percent by the end of 2008, Ratcliff said.

- Staff writer Bradley J. Fikes contributed to this story.