SOUTH BEND -- Think of it as having nowhere to go but up.

Four distinguished economists from Indiana University are predicting the economic recovery that has started will continue next year but, they noted, the climb out of the worst downturn since the Great Depression will be slow, difficult and could possibly stumble. The professors who detailed the fallout from the recession and looked ahead to a worrisome future were part of the 2010 Business Outlook Panel, which spoke to a crowd of business professionals Thursday morning at Hilton Garden Inn on the Saint Mary's College campus.

"The good news is we expect 2010 to be substantially better than 2009," said Timothy Slaper, director of economic analysis at the Indiana Business Research Center. "The bad news is 2009 was really awful."

Elkhart County is recording a little increased business activity and job growth, said Grant Black, assistant professor of economics at Indiana University South Bend. However, it suffered a major blow during the recession and while the unemployment rate has been steadily falling since it peaked near 19 percent in March, the rate probably will not go lower than 10 percent in 2010.

The damage the recession did to Elkhart County's economy includes:

* the local labor force has shrunk 6 percent

* well over 31,000 jobs were lost from September 2007 to September 2009

* job losses in the manufacturing sector hit 18,500

* real wages dropped more than 9 percent

* about 12,000 households are currently receiving food stamps, a 70 percent increase from August 2007

* Gross Domestic Product fell more than 9 percent in 2008, the second worst in the United States

Government intervention, namely in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, helped to cushion the financial meltdown and economic contraction across the nation, Slaper said. Still both he and Black are uncertain if the recovery has the fortitude to continue rebuilding as the stimulus money runs out.

The unwinding of the government's economic programs coupled with the potential need to raise taxes and interest rates to pay down the ballooning federal deficit could either slow the recovery or cause the economy to regress altogether.

For the state as a whole, leading economic indicators are anticipated to rise slightly or remain flat which, said Jerry Conover, director of the IBRC, is better than declining.

"We have guarded but curious optimism that things will be better" in 2010, he said.

In the last two months, 9,000 new jobs have come to Indiana and Conover predicted 40,000 to 50,000 more jobs will be added by the end of next year. Yet, he pointed out, since the late summer of 2007, the state has lost almost 200,000 jobs.

This means if the number of jobs increases at the rate Conover expects in 2010, Indiana will take four years to recoup all the jobs lost since 2007.