After years of budgeting under the strain of current and future deficits, the November economic forecast continued Minnesota’s streak of glad tidings. The report, released Thursday, was the fifth straight (dating to November 2011) in which the state has projected a surplus for the current biennium. The November report predicts that the state will end the 2014-15 budget cycle with an $825 million net surplus.

The November economic forecast released Thursday projects that the state of Minnesota will end the current biennium with an $825 million surplus. In the immediate afterglow, one note of consensus among major players was that the news should be taken with cautious optimism – though each cited different reasons for doing so.

Good humor likely will come in handy. Kalambokidis, 49, not only has recently taken over for Tom Stinson, one of the best liked, most knowledgeable and skilled state employees of recent times. As state economist, Kalambokidis knows, she has a nettlesome job with a steep learning curve in front of her.

At age 70, after 26 years as Minnesota’s top economic soothsayer, Tom Stinson’s retirement hardly came as a shock. He was already by far the longest-serving state economist — none of his predecessors held the position for more than five years — and he had a comfortable side job teaching economics at the University of Minnesota.

Current University of Minnesota applied economics professor Laura Kalambokidis will take over as state economist, making her the first woman to serve in the role since the position was created in 1975. Stinson, 70, was first named state economist since 1987, holding a job for decades that economists before him only held for several years at a time.