The Wasatch Front may have led most of the nation in job growth before the recession began, but that may be cold comfort as Utah struggles to restart after its worst recession in 75 years, KeyBank's chief investment strategist said Wednesday.

"Clearly, you are doing well in terms of overall jobs growth over the last few years, partly because of what's going on along the Wasatch Front," Bruce McCain said.

"But it doesn't look like prospects for getting to the bottom [of job losses] and coming out the other side are necessarily a lot brighter here than in other parts of the economy," McCain said during an economic outlook presentation at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City.

McCain's gloom mirrors what state employment experts have said repeatedly this year. Mark Knold, chief economist of the Utah Department of Workforce Services, has said that growth probably won't resume until November 2010.

McCain said the "worst financial earthquake" the U.S. has seen since the 1930s appears to have ended in March. But data from two previous recoveries show a marked shift in how employment bounces back. Instead of recovering quickly, job growth in the 1991 expansion didn't get started for 11 months. And when the 2001 recession ended, job growth didn't begin for 33 months, he said.

McCain didn't have comparable Utah data for the 1991 recovery. But it took 31 months for employment to increase after the 2001 downturn, he said.

A key reason for the lengthening times is that the U.S. economy is ageing, while the economies of developing countries such as China are young and robust.

McCain said the jobs recovery in 1991 took longer to get going, but when it did, it paralleled recoveries from earlier recessions. In 2001, it took even longer to get job growth restarted and when it took hold, the rate of growth was much slower, he said.

"Even worse, we saw a sharp loss of jobs coming out of this [recession] than we did in the past. This reflects the increasing pressure the United States and other developing economies are feeling from emerging markets," McCain said.

McCain said consumer spending is likely to be restrained during the coming month. Americans have less access to credit, which fueled much of the spending in the years before the latest recession began in December 2001.

What's more, spending relative income reached a record high and remains elevated, despite the recession. While there's room to move higher, consumer spending will probably no longer grow faster than incomes, McCain said.

"A good part of the consumer-led boom that we've enjoyed in the last 20 years is behind us," he said.

McCain said surveys are showing that business owners and managers are seeing signs that sales will pick up soon. The strongest sector of the recovery is likely to be exports, thanks to the sagging dollar, he said.