Building permits issued? Down.

Housing starts? Down.

Houses under construction or finished? Down.

Where? In Utah, the West and across the United States.

"There's no putting lipstick on that pig,” said Curt Dowdle, executive officer of the Salt Lake Home Builders Association, after the U.S. Commerce Department released September's residential construction figures. "Along the Wasatch Front, we're down 75 percent from our high year - 2006 - and 50 percent from last year, which was a little slower."

According to Cedar City-based Construction Monitor, which tracks building activity, eight Wasatch Front counties issued 261 building permits last month for single-family homes (with a total value of $60.3 million).

That is barely over half as many as September 2007, decried then as the worst month since 1990. In September 2006, before the housing bubble burst, those Wasatch Front counties issued 1,177 building permits for homes valued at $265 million.

The drop-offs are just as pronounced in fast-growing northern Utah (Cache and Box Elder counties) and southwestern Utah (St. George and Cedar City). The number of building permits issued in those areas last month was 50 percent and 63 percent less, respectively, than two years earlier.

National numbers are just as grim.

The Commerce Department said 532,000 building permits were issued for new single-family homes last month, 39 percent fewer than a year earlier and 4 percent fewer than in August.

Housing starts for single-family homes dipped 42 percent to 544,000. Overall housing starts, including condominiums and apartments, declined 31 percent from September 2007 to last month.

"Builders have stopped building in large measure, but they waited too long to stop," Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, told Bloomberg Television. "They've got to clear the inventory."

Utah's homebuilding industry, which remained strong after the national slump began, does not have the inventory problem of other areas, Dowdle said.

"Very few people are building on speculation. Most is custom or pre-sales," he said. "Right now, locally, we have about nine months of supply [of new homes], which is four months longer than we like."

Dowdle is encouraged by what he sees as an increased public understanding of his industry's importance to the overall economy.

"We say homebuilding is responsible for 26 percent of the gross domestic product. But given the ancillary businesses dependent on housing - mattress companies, paint manufacturers, furniture sellers - I'd say we're at more than 50 percent. The reverberations of the dearth in housing starts are impacting everywhere."

"The last two months in particular," agreed David Bleckert, general sales manager for Mattress Warehouse outlets in Midvale, Salt Lake City, Orem and Park City. "With the financial situation the way it is, everyone is puckering up."

When people buy new homes, they usually want one more bedroom than before. That means more mattresses. People aren't buying now. When they do, they're buying cheaper products.

"It's affecting my bottom line," Bleckert said. "It's a little bit of a struggle right now."

mikeg@sltrib.com