“It’s not a great, rapid recovery, but it is there and we won’t have to wait until 2013 or 2014 to see it,” he said.

Denslow, a professor and research economist at the University of Florida, addressed the Economic Club of Florida in Tallahassee Friday on “The Economic Influence of Florida’s Changing Demography.”

“What’s clearly going to happen is the rate of growth in Florida will slow down,” Denslow said. “There will not be as many construction and real estate jobs as before.”

Though Denslow believes the state will not see a revival of the dizzying economic growth of years past, he insisted the economy has turned the corner. “We have to remember how bad things were in Fall 2008,” said Denslow, noting there were fears of a second Great Depression, with unemployment reaching 20 percent.

The economist said the $787 billion federal stimulus helped to some extent. While conceding it would be debated for years to come, he said the stimulus kept unemployment from getting worse. “Government pulled out every stop it had to avoid a depression.”

By March 2009, Denslow said that America managed to avoid a depression.

He feels the nation is headed for recovery, but it will not be a quick one. He predicts that the economies of Western European nations will level off, but other nations, especially Brazil, China and India, will see rapid recoveries. “There still are difficulties. The unemployment rate will come down gradually.”

Denslow agreed with National Economic Council Director Larry Summers’ quote that “what we are seeing is a statistical recovery and a human recession.” While recovery may be coming, with Florida facing record unemployment rates, it was easy to be pessimistic. Forty percent of unemployed Floridians have been out of work for more than six months.

While most experts say Florida will see a gradual reeducation in the unemployment rate, dropping from 12.2 percent presently to 8 percent or 9 percent by 2014, Denslow remains more optimistic about Floridians getting back to work.

He said that Florida’s economy and its unemployment remained tied to the housing market. Noting that the number of two parent families with children were declining, Denslow insists this did not mean that there would be a housing crisis. “The demand for housing,” he said, “has nothing to do with kids.” Denslow said that families with children spend on their kids and not their houses.

Denslow reviewed the changes in the housing market that Florida has seen over the last 30 years. He said that the housing market kept pace with the rate of inflation from 1980 until 2000, before housing prices started increasingly drastically.

David Denslow

Denslow said too many people insisted there was no housing bubble. He specifically targeted David Lereah, who formerly served the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. Lereah wrote the book Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Burst and was very bullish on the future of the market.