Oct. 14--The most brutal recession in Utah in seven decades seems to be touching bottom, but the recovery won't generate notable job growth until at least the end of next year, a Zions Bancorp economist said Tuesday.

"What we are talking about is year-over-year changes in total employment," said Jeff Thredgold, a consulting economist for Zions. "Some of the year-over-year comparisons over the next three to five months will not be quite as painful as they have been."

In August, the number of jobs lost in the state over the previous 12 months was 55,400. The estimated 4.4 percent decline was the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s and is likely to be revised downward.

Economists obsess over employment changes because job trends are the best measure of how Utah's economy is performing. Gains lead to income growth, which in turn ushers in consumer spending. Contractions produce recessions.

Using employment growth as his barometer, the economic recovery that Thredgold senses will be lackluster.

While he says a return to "modest" job creation will be evident within six to nine months, Thredgold actually means that year-over-year job losses will only grow smaller. Real growth won't happen until the end of 2010 or early 2011, he said.

Thredgold's prediction squares with estimates made by Mark Knold, chief economist of the Utah Department of Workforce Services. He doesn't think year-over-year job growth will commence until

the final quarter of 2010. Until then, the best that can be said is that the rate at which Utah's economy sheds jobs will slowly ebb before turning upward in November of that year.

The department's preliminary estimate of jobs lost in the 12 months ending Sept. 30 will be released Thursday. Knold said it's likely that the figure will be better than the 4.4 percent loss his department estimated last month for the year ending Aug. 30.

"We think we are at the bottom of the downturn, that the worst of the job losses, and the continuing additions to them have kind of run their course," Knold said.

Whatever the department reports will only be an educated guess. It will revise the number when more information becomes available in a few months. Knold recently revised loss rates for April, May and June -- and at 5 percent, 5.1 percent and 5.4 percent, respectively, the rates were worse than first reported.

The September number will still be in the minus 4 percent range, but "the good point is that those [worse] numbers are behind us. We are going to improve those numbers," Knold said.

Like Thredgold, Knold notes that while Utah probably has turned the corner, the better job-loss figures that lie ahead will be compared to the same month a year earlier, when the economy was falling off a cliff.

"At this point it's just the mathematics. It's not because businesses are throwing their doors back open and hiring more workers," he said.

pbeebe@sltrib.com

A look back at job losses over the last year. Figures show the percent decline in Utah jobs from the same month a year earlier.

Preliminary estimates probably will be revised downward in coming months

August 2008: -0.1 percent

September: -0.1 percent

October: -0.8 percent

November: -1.8 percent

December: -2.2 percent

January 2009: -3.3 percent

February: -4 percent

March: -4.5 percent

April: -5 percent

May: -5.1 percent

June: -5.4 percent

July: -4.2 percent (preliminary)

August: -4.4 percent (preliminary)

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