South Bay workers are better paid and more educated than workers overall in Los Angeles County, but they also suffer from a stifled housing market, according to a new review and forecast of local business trends.

The second annual South Bay Economic Forecast and Industry Outlook report was released Thursday at a Cal State Dominguez Hills conference with local business and civic leaders. The study, commissioned by the university’s Economics Institute, was compiled by Los Angeles-based Beacon Economics.

The report found the region is economically stable, with steady growth, and is well-positioned for a boom with coming major developments such as the Los Angeles Rams stadium in Inglewood and high-paying innovative technical industries that are emerging.

“Income gains, including significant wage increases, are feeding into increased consumer spending,” said Robert Kleinhenz, executive director of Beacon Economics. “It’s a little bit over 3 percent. This is a good, solid growth rate.

“You may be looking over your shoulder wondering when the next recession is happening. There are no signs on the horizon at the present time” and through 2017, Kleinhenz said.

With the housing market suffering from a supply shortage, South Bay home sales jumped from prior years in 2015 and 2016 and are likely to grow next year, the report states. Housing costs increased the most this year in El Segundo, Rolling Hills, Gardena, Rancho Palos Verdes, Carson, Manhattan Beach and Torrance.

Meanwhile, high housing costs and low supply have pushed many residents into apartments, causing rents to soar by 5.2 percent in 2015-16 and creating low vacancy rates in the range of 3 percent, the report says. Rents are expected to continue to climb.

Like housing supply, workforce supply is tight. The limited number of trained, educated South Bay workers caused payrolls to jump in 2015 by 6.6 percent — nearly 1 percentage point more than the Los Angeles County average. The average annual wage increased to $60,600 and the professional and business services sectors grew to be the largest employers.

Outside of professional and business services, the industries providing the most jobs are manufacturing, health care, leisure and hospitality, transportation and utilities, retail and government, respectively.

What’s more, most South Bay workers commute only 25 minutes or less to their jobs, the report found.

“Los Angeles County has the largest (percentage) of manufacturing jobs anywhere in the nation, and the South Bay is even higher,” Kleinhenz said. “Goods movement at the Port of Los Angeles, LAX, and all segments of the transportation and warehouse economy are strong.”

People who bought homes in the South Bay in 2015 and 2016 most likely purchased them in Torrance, Redondo Beach, San Pedro or Carson.

Cities with the highest sales tax revenues were Torrance, Carson, Hawthorne, Inglewood and Redondo Beach. However, Carson saw a 25 percent plummet in its 2015 taxable sales. Cheap gas prices have been a major contributor to declining sales tax revenues, and gas costs aren’t expected to increase.

“We’re the world’s biggest producer of oil at the present time,” Kleinhenz said. “The price of oil is low and there is little incentive for new extractions” because of a glut in supply.

Industrial buildings used for warehousing and distribution are at a premium in the region, with a vacancy rate of less than 1 percent. El Segundo issued $209 million worth of nonresidential building permits in 2015, vastly outpacing other cities in the South Bay. Torrance followed with $119 million, and the rest of the region trailed significantly behind that.

Aerospace, defense and petroleum refining remain the South Bay’s mainstays. But those industries are shifting as innovative, service-based technologies replace old manufacturing production, according to the report.

“Were it a county in its own right, the South Bay would be the 10th largest county in California,” said university President Willie J. Hagan. “The report tells a story of transition and of economic diversification, with growth in tech start-ups, creative industries, medical device manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies joining the long-dominant industries of our economy.”

Though professional and business services, manufacturing, health care and leisure and hospitality industries top the list of South Bay employers, high-paid innovative technical jobs in medical and aerospace fields are growing quickly. The report calls them “game-changing industries.”

Those include Hawthorne rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and other space-related product developers and manufacturers, such as El Segundo satellite maker Millennium Space Systems.

“Everything you’re doing today on your smartphone is really powered by space,” said Vince Deno, chief operating officer of Millennium Space Systems, who spoke at Thursday’s conference. “You may not be touching a satellite but you’re certainly indirectly using one. The South Bay is really the center for excellence for the space economy, and the number of satellites is increasing very dramatically.”

The region also promises to see a major expansion from Inglewood’s coming NFL stadium in 2019. The stadium site, at the former Hollywood Park racetrack complex, will be situated on a massive campus that is the largest entitled real-estate project in Southern California, according to NFL Executive Vice President Kevin Demoff, who also spoke Thursday.

The site will be eight or nine times the size of LA Live.

“It will be the pre-eminent sports and entertainment district in the world,” Demoff said. “It will be a city within a city. We really view this as a connecting point between the South Bay and what lies north of the airport in Playa Vista.”