Rhode Island’s battered economy will continue to deteriorate and the worst is not expected to be over until the second half of next year, according to a sobering new forecast to be released Tuesday by a regional economic analysis group.

The state will shed an estimated 9,000 more jobs in the coming year, and unemployment rates will keep creeping up, hitting a high of 14.1 percent in the second quarter of 2010. Housing prices, meanwhile, will struggle in the short term before beginning a slow climb, starting in 2011, a report from the New England Economic Partnership, a nonpartisan forecasting group, predicts.

“If you look at Rhode Island’s economic forecast for the next two years, it’s color code red. We’re in trouble. I just don’t think that can be sugar coated,” said Edward M. Mazze, distinguished university professor of business administration at the University of Rhode Island, and the report’s co-forecaster for this state.

The latest outlook offers a bleaker picture of the state’s economic health than one released this spring. Forecasters now say they were too optimistic in predicting unemployment rates and the impact that federal stimulus funds would have in creating jobs here.

The report comes on the same day that state revenue estimators are to agree on the size of Rhode Island’s revenue collections for the next year. A week ago, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com gave those budgeting officials a less-drastic assessment of the state’s economy, suggesting that jobless rates could top off next year at a more conservative 13.8 percent.

However, NEEP co-forecaster Edinaldo Tebaldi, assistant professor of economics at Bryant University, cites the fact that Rhode Island has already hit the 13-percent mark as a strong indicator that the state will exceed 14 percent unemployment in the coming year.

Tebaldi will present the findings Tuesday morning at the New England Economic Partnership’s fall conference in Boston, as will economists from the five other states in the region.

While states throughout the country pronounce themselves on the cusp of recovery, Rhode Island has yet to hit that upswing. At 13 percent, its unemployment level in September was by far the highest in New England and almost 3 percent higher than the national rate.

The Rhode Island jobless rate is not expected to dip below 10 percent until 2013, when it could decline to 8.8 percent, the forecast suggests. And that level doesn’t take into account the estimated thousands of people who have given up looking for work, or are forced to take part-time jobs.

The state’s housing assessment is equally tepid. The annual median home price may continue to slide from $246,200 in 2008 to an estimated $181,600 in 2010 –– a level not seen since 2002. It may take until 2012 to hover around $200,000 again, the forecast says.

Bankruptcies are predicted to grow, and the population is forecast to continue stagnating as more people relocate to states with more attractive economic opportunities.

But even with Rhode Island’s comparatively weak position, it is showing signs of encouragement, the report says.

Mazze compared the state’s recession to a U curve. The economy here has come close to bottoming out, he said. “But it’s a U not a V, so it’s going to take time, and it’s going to go sector to sector.”

While the hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs is not expected to stop anytime soon, economists predict modest increases in education and health-services positions in the coming year. And statistics indicate an increase in work for employment agencies –– often a sign that companies are gearing up to hire full-time workers.

Home sales and building permits, too, are on the rise, partly as a result of lower price points and the first-time homebuyers’ tax credit, which Congress recently extended through the spring.

But the report is clear that Rhode Island will not put itself in a position for a sustainable recovery unless it improves its business climate and starts to brand itself with a sense of economic identity.

It must, the forecast says, “identify sectors with comparative advantage and potential for job and income creation and then make significant efforts to attract these industries to Rhode Island.”

Even then, the report concludes, “The economic outlook for Rhode Island over the next few years is somewhat dismal.”

cneedham@projo.com