Data through the second quarter of 2011 raise new questions about the pace and certainty of recovery in the Intermountain West, a report by Brookings Mountain West said today.
Even places like Denver, Colorado Springs and Ogden, Utah – which only suffered mild setbacks in the early quarters of the recession – have stagnated in the wake of the nation’s worst economic slump since the Great Depression, said Brookings Mountain West, a partnership of the Brookings Institution and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
“Output and employment increased hesitantly in eight of 10 major metro areas of the Intermountain West in the second quarter while the housing market slumped to new lows everywhere,” said the report.
It said that four years after employment levels hit their highs, Boise, Phoenix and Las Vegas – areas bearing a disproportionate brunt of the national economic implosion – rank as some of the cities hit worst by the recession.
Tucson and Provo, Utah have fared only marginally better.
Performances in Denver, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Ogden appear to be tracking broadly in national economic trends.
According to Brookings, the bottom line is: “Recovery in the Mountain region is progressing variably and unevenly more than three years after the initial crack-up. The anemic national recovery threatens to drag down the performance of even the region’s typically resilient economies on Utah’s Wasatch Front and Colorado’s Front Range.”
It said that Utah and Colorado metropolitan areas were closest to recouping jobs lost to the recession while those worst hit by the housing bust struggled the most.
The overall jobs picture in Ogden, Colorado Springs and Salt Lake City looked comparatively bright.
However, Denver’s economy has 4.8 percent fewer jobs than it did before the recession. Making a bad situation worse, public sector job cuts hit eight of the 10 mountain metro areas over the second quarter. Public sector employment fell by 0.2 percent in Denver. By contrast, public sector employment in Colorado Springs grew modestly by 0.4 percent.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
