Outlook Highlights

• Over 250,000 new jobs needed monthly, on a sustained basis, to reabsorb all the jobs lost since the recession. 
  
• Unemployment rate moves up to 9 percent; average unemployment duration was 38.3 weeks in April, down slightly from the record of 39 weeks in March.
• The rate of seriously delinquent mortgages (8.6 percent average) will likely trend lower during 2011, but continue to remain at extraordinarily high levels for an extended period.
• During the first quarter of 2011, home prices decreased by 2.8 percent nationwide.
• Positive signs: homebuyer affordability remains extraordinarily high, mortgage rates low, house prices are well off their cyclic peak and contract signings for existing home sales are up.  
• Projecting a 5 percent increase in 2011 home sales over 2010, on a calendar year basis.