Rhode Island’s economy is forecast to stall next year, as the housing market weakens and the rate of job growth slows to dead last in New England, according to a report released today by the New England Economic Project.

Employment in Rhode Island is expected to increase next year by just 2,000 jobs, or 0.4 percent, according to the report. That is less than half the job-growth rate forecast for Massachusetts, and slower than the rest of New England, said Edward M. Mazze, the economic project’s forecaster for Rhode Island.

Rhode Island’s economy “is in neutral,” Mazze said in an interview about the forecast he will present today at the New England Economic Project conference in Westborough, Mass. “It’s as though we’re on the top of the hill and we could start sliding backward.”

If the prediction proves accurate, Rhode Island’s employment will be growing at less than half the annual average rate promised by Governor Carcieri when he took office in 2003. Back then, Carcieri pledged to create 20,000 new jobs over his four-year term, an average of 5,000 jobs per year.

But real job gains this year are expected to be far less than the governor’s goal. The New England Economic Project forecast is for Rhode Island to end this year with a gain of 2,500 jobs.

Mazze, the retired dean of the University of Rhode Island’s College of Business Administration, described Rhode Island’s economic problems as both local and global. Companies, such as American Power Conversion, are trying to cut costs by moving jobs overseas; the slowdown in new home construction will mean slower sales of home goods; and as house prices flatten, homeowners can no longer keep borrowing against the equity in their houses to support their spending habits.

Consider what has happened to house prices. From 2001 to 2004, the median price of a single-family house in Rhode Island rose by double digits. But last year, the median price rose just over 7 percent — about half the gains in 2004. The report forecasts that the median price of a single-family house this year will have increased just 0.3 percent — and next year about 1 percent. The forecast for 2008 is for an increase of 0.36 percent.

“We’re not going to be able to count on the New Yorkers to pay the premiums on second houses in Rhode Island,” Mazze said, “because people realize this is a down market.”

The forecast also calls for declining home sales through next year, when home sales are expected to fall by about 11 percent, followed by another 11-percent decline the following year.

Rhode Island’s economy is also hampered by a lack of high-tech, software, communications and biotech companies — what one national survey calls the “Technology Fast 500” companies — that drive job growth and investment, Mazze said. He quoted a recent survey by Deloitte & Touché that shows that Massachusetts has 39 such companies, Connecticut 11 and Rhode Island zero. So companies that do that sort of work are unlikely to choose Rhode Island, he said, since they tend to locate in “clusters.”

Even Rhode Island’s tourism industry, which held up better than most states when air travel plummeted in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, has weakened. This year, Rhode Island’s leisure and hospitality industry is expected to have gained just 100 jobs, the forecast shows. Higher gas prices and the return of more air travel have made it harder for Rhode Island to compete for tourists, Mazze said.

Job growth in the leisure and hospitality industry is expected to pick up next year to 2 percent, or 1,000 jobs, the economic project forecasts, as new hotels, restaurants and retail sites open to support the commercial development in Providence’s downtown.

“All of the hotels that are going up are going to be hiring the people that the casino was going to hire,” said Mazze, referring to the statewide referendum that voters rejected last Tuesday to allow a casino to be built in West Warwick.

Mazze was an outspoken supporter of the casino, which promoters promised would create 3,800 new jobs.

The question now is, where will the job growth come from?

“We really spend tremendous amounts of time and effort talking about the types of jobs educated people would like to see other educated people get,” Mazze said, “and we don’t spend enough time talking about the type of jobs people based on their education and background can really get.”

For example, many of the higher-paying financial services jobs at companies such as Fidelity Investments, Mazze said, are not local hires.

The managers, he said, often either commute from Boston or relocate here. Most of the local hiring is done for lower-paid call-center jobs.

“We need to concentrate more on understanding what the real skills are for the Rhode Island work force in the years 2006 and 2007,” Mazze said, “and think seriously about who we are and where we are going — rather than create hopes that are just not going to happen in the foreseeable future.”

Education and health services are forecast to add 1,100 jobs this year and 1,300 jobs next year. Hospitals are the state’s largest employers, followed by doctors’ offices and nursing homes. The financial activities sector is expected to increase employment this year by 1,100, and next year by 1,300.

Per capita income is forecast to rise 5.7 percent this year, to just over $38,000, and 4.4 percent next year.