Dr. Michael Pakko, chief economist and state economic forecaster for UALR’s Institute for Economic Advancement, said final statistics for the fourth quarter of 2011 predicts steady but unremarkable growth as the economy slowly emerges from the aftermath of the 2008‐09 recession.

“In general, the data have confirmed our expectations that 2011 would show a slowdown in the pace of the economic recovery overall, but with clear signs of improvement in the final months of the year,” Pakko said.

“In some cases, our expectations for improvement in the waning months of 2011 were exceeded – in other cases our outlook was overly optimistic. Accordingly, the forecast revisions are mixed. And the outlook – in broad strokes – continues to be one of steady but unremarkable growth,” Pakko said during the Arkansas State University Economic Outlook Conference.

“Yesterday’s data‐release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that total personal income in Arkansas grew by 3.7 percent in 2011. This fell closely in line with our forecast of 3.6 percent growth for the year,” he said. “Hence, revisions to the outlook are minor, due, in part, to lower‐than‐expected transfer payments in the second half of 2011.

“The forecast for personal income growth in 2012 has been revised from 5.1 percent to 5.0 percent.”

Pakko left the forecast for 2013 unchanged at 3.9 percent.