Jobs. It's what's for dinner. Throw all the other bullshit stats out the window, because when you are facing 14% to 18% official unemployment, and 18% to 22% real unemployment (as measured in the same way it was during the Great Depression - as a direct % of the working age population without a job), nothing else matters. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWJ1aTFKp35E U.S. Home Prices to Fall Through 2011âs First Quarter, PMI Says Share | Email | Print | A A A By Dan Levy July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Home prices may fall in more than half of the largest U.S. cities through the first quarter of 2011 as unemployment and foreclosures rise, mortgage insurer PMI Group Inc. said. Thirty of the 50 biggest metropolitan areas have at least a 75 percent chance of lower prices through March 31, 2011, Walnut Creek, California-based PMI said in a report today. The decline is likely to spread to âall regions of the nationâ from California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, the states most affected by the housing slump, PMI said. âThe housing market has been hit by a demand shock of high unemployment and a supply shock of distressed foreclosure sales,â LaVaughn Henry, senior economist at PMI, the fourth- largest U.S. mortgage insurer, said in an interview. Unemployment rose to 9.5 percent in June, bringing the total number of jobs lost to 6.5 million since December 2007, the Labor Department said July 2. Foreclosure filings may hit a record 1.8 million in the first half of the year as more jobless homeowners default on their loans, real estate data service RealtyTrac Inc. said last month. Home prices in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas dropped 18.1 percent in April from a year earlier, following an 18.7 decrease in March, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index. Prices are forecast to fall 41.7 percent from their peak, Deutsche Bank AG analysts led by Karen Weaver wrote in a June 15 report. Florida Drops Predicted âAffordability is no longer the driving issue in the housing market, and we believe prices still have a ways to fall in many areas before home prices reach their trough,â the Deutsche Bank analysts wrote. The 15 areas with the highest probability of lower prices in 2011 each have a 99 percent chance, PMI said. They include Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville in Florida; Riverside, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Sacramento and San Diego in California; Las Vegas; Phoenix; Providence, Rhode Island; and Detroit. Edison and Newark in New Jersey have a 97 percent and 96 percent chance, respectively, and Nassau, New York, has a 92 percent chance. New York City showed an 88 percent chance of lower prices, according to PMI. âThe New York area has gone from a moderate level to an elevated level because of the big hit from the financial crisis,â Henry said. Washington showed a 92 percent chance of lower prices; Portland, Oregon, and Baltimore each have 90 percent; Atlanta has 81 percent; Boston has an 80 percent chance; San Jose, California has 78 percent; and Minneapolis has a 75 percent chance, PMI said. The areas with the least chance of lower prices, each with less than a 6 percent probability, include Cleveland; Pittsburgh; Columbus, Ohio; San Antonio; Houston; Dallas, and Fort Worth, Texas, according to PMI. The insurer compiles its âmarket riskâ index from income, interest-rate, home-price and affordability data going back to the early 1980s. To contact the reporter on this story: Dan Levy in San Francisco at dlevy13@bloomberg.net Last Updated: July 7, 2009 00:01 EDT