Los Angeles County’s job growth is expected to slow slightly next year to just over 1 percent while the unemployment rate should hold steady in the low 4 percent range, according to a forecast released last week from Beacon Economics, a Westchester consulting firm.

Beacon projects nonfarm employment – which rose by 64,000 jobs for a 1.4 percent growth rate between August 2017 and August of this year – to grow at between 1 percent and 1.4 percent through the end of this year and into 2019. The county had about 4.5 million payroll employees in August, according to figures from the state Employment Development Department.

“2019 is looking like the year when the jobs slowdown we’ve anticipated for some time begins to materialize,” Robert Kleinhenz, Beacon’s executive director of research, said in a statement accompanying the release of the forecast.

Beacon also issued forecasts for several other metro areas in the state late last week, including the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego County.

The Los Angeles County forecast said the market will continue to face a tight labor market with “marginal increases in the workforce” limiting the ability of companies to hire more workers.

The county’s unemployment rate, which has hovered around 4.5 percent in recent months, is already at a historically low level and won’t fall much further, according to the forecast, which pegged a 4.3 percent rate for the end of this year and into next year.

The forecast notes that the county’s commercial real estate market has performed strongly over the past year, with the second quarter value of $560 million in commercial building permits at double the level of the second quarter of 2017. Office vacancy rates held steady at 14.7 percent over that same time period with rental rates rising 3 percent to $38.18 per square foot.