The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to climb from an estimated 5.7 percent this year to 7.8 percent next year as consumers pull back their spending, sending businesses already hurting from the credit crunch into further despair.

“It’s generally felt that given the enormity of the financial meltdown, the current recession will be worse than average,” the report said. “That suggests the current downturn has a way to go before a recovery takes hold.”

Though the number of jobs in almost every major industry in the country is predicted to decline as it did in 2008, forecasters said the losses would come at a slower rate next year because many declining industries associated with real estate have undergone their largest layoffs.

It is one of a few modest economic bright spots forecasters said could be in store for the country.

By as early as mid-2009, homes priced near or below median values may reach a trough, they said, as reduced construction activity and rising sales bring a smaller supply of homes closer to levels of demand. That could set the stage for a recovery in 2010, forecasters said.

“We see some light at the end of the tunnel,” said Esmael Adibi, director of Chapman University’s A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research. The university is located in Orange, Calif.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., was not involved in the forecast and said it might take longer to reach the bottom of the housing market.

“There’s still going to be a lot of layoffs,” Kyser said. “You’ve got to be really cautious. We know there’s going to be a lot more pain in the residential and non-residential construction” industries.

The economy could gain from a stimulus package in the hundreds of billions of dollars, as proposed by President-elect Barack Obama, researchers said.

James Doti, Chapman University’s president and one of the participating forecasters, said the stimulus could help reverse the economic downward cycle by encouraging more lending and more spending on the part of consumers.

John Husing, who heads Economics & Politics Inc., an economic research firm specializing in California’s Inland Empire east of Los Angeles, said the Chapman report was on the mark describing a troubling year ahead.

He said the stimulus package could provide a significant lift, especially if it was geared toward job creation, which he said would have a longer-lasting effect than rebate checks.

Strengthening infrastructure increases economic capacity, which lays the foundation for growth in the future, said Husing, who did not contribute to the Chapman forecast.

The Chapman forecasters studied the nation’s six most recent recessions, spanning from 1969 to 2001, to better understand how the economy recovered in each instance.

Consumer spending and demand in residential housing have historically been the catalysts for recovery, they found.

Chapman University releases its forecast annually. The economists said Tuesday that they were among the few to say last year that the U.S. was already in recession.