For years, economists and local business leaders have been searching for the bottom of the economic trough — the point at which there’s nowhere to go but up.

By most indicators, it was in 2012, the year Richard Wobbekind, executive director of the Business Research Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder Leeds School of Business, said Grand Junction appeared to have “weathered the worst” of a national recession that lingered in western Colorado far longer than the rest of the state.

Wobbekind is an annual visitor to Grand Junction, sharing results of economic data compiled for the Colorado Business Economic Outlook. But even if 2012 was the worst, succeeding years have been uneven. Some economic indicators look worse than others. Business filings, real estate transactions, rate of foreclosures, property values, capital investment, hotel occupancy, unemployment and sales tax and severance tax receipts haven’t trended in a positive direction at the same time.

Read more at The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.