... The slowdown that is battering the Inland Empire and Southern California is part of a global slowdown that doesn't appear to be going away soon, said Delores Conway, a professor at USC and director of the report.
"We're in a recession, and this one looks like it's going to be more prolonged than the last one we were in," Conway said. "With unemployment as high as it is, and it's way up there right now, I think this could be as bad as the recession of the early 1990s."
A lot of new office space went online in the Inland region earlier this year, just as businesses started downsizing and demand for office space dropped, Conway said. She predicted that the vacant office and industrial space will be leased eventually but declined to speculate on how soon.
"If I had the answer to that I would move to Washington, D.C., and fix the problem," she said...