A new 
Brookings Institution report on the mountain states' economy paints a mixed picture of the region's rebound from the recession, with Denver and other cities showing "robust" output growth, and yet with job recovery rates trailing the rest of the nation.
"Metros like Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, and Denver have only been moderately affected by the recession and seem poised to renew their upward trajectory as the pace of recovery quickens," the report says.
But it also notes that, "for the first time in at least three decades, the Mountain West’s job recovery is lagging the nation's."
The latest "Mountain Monitor" report, focusing on the fourth quarter of 2009, is produced by Brookings Mountain West, a partnership of Washington-based Brookings and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
The report covers Colorado as well as Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah.
Among the study's key points:
• Amid overall growth in business output across the mountain West, Denver, along with Colorado Springs and Ogden, Utah, are showing the greatest gains in gross metropolitan product among 10 of the region's largest metro areas. Ogden and Albuquerque already have returned to their pre-recession output peaks, the report says.
• But employment in the 10 metro areas declined 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter. "The slowness of the job recovery is new for the region," the report says, noting that following the last three national recessions, job growth across the mountain West was faster than the national average.
• Also "troubling," says the report, "is the continued failure of a housing market recovery to materialize in the region; housing market declines actually accelerated in the fourth quarter." A robust housing recovery had been a feature of past post-recession periods in the mountain states.
Despite its mixed view of the region's rebound from the recession, the Brooking report notes that while the recession erased almost all of the job growth of the 2000-2010 decade nationwide, "the large metros of the Intermountain West still possess 9 percent more jobs than they started the decade with, given their torrid pre-recession growth rates."
It also said the region's education levels "continued to predict better economic performance and lower unemployment rates across the Mountain West. Denver and Colorado Springs, which have weathered the recession rather well, excel by this measure."
