Economists from the University of California at Los Angeles said Tuesday that the state and the nation will survive the lingering housing slump and mounting job losses without plunging into a recession.

UCLA’s quarterly economic barometer, called the Anderson Forecast, indicated that while housing remains the drag on the economy, the swelling amount of foreclosures is more related to falling prices and escalating interest rates than to large job losses.

People “are walking away from their homes in droves not because they lost their jobs but because home prices are falling,” UCLA Anderson Forecast Director Edward Leamer said in the report. “We are holding firm: no recession this time.”

The report said that industrial production growth remains steady and consumer spending, while curtailed, remains relatively strong on big-ticket items and is expected to keep inching up, the report said.

The forecast predicts that the Gross Domestic Product will drop by 0.4 percent in the second quarter of 2008, but will then rebound.

Leamer added that while there will likely be no recession, there is little room to rejoice as the economy will slow to a sputter. In fact, it will be so delicate that “if there is a quick halt to consumer spending, we will for sure have a recession in 2008.”

“In the past 10 years, the U.S. economy has had two locomotives,” the tech and housing booms, Leamer said. “Looking to the future, there isn’t another locomotive. There is still not a reason for great optimism.”

For the national picture, the forecast said national unemployment will peak at 5.6 percent at the beginning of 2009 up from the current rate of 4.8 percent.

Statewide unemployment will peak at the end of 2008, hovering around 6 percent, and will decline slightly in 2009 until 2010 when it will fall to 5.5 percent, the forecast said.