Not to harp on it, but many Coloradans will need to have decent jobs before they consider the recession to be over, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cautiously predicted last month. Just yesterday, we noted that construction jobs in Denver are down by 16 percent compared to 2008.

Here’s some apparent good news: Richard Wobbekind, the University of Colorado at Boulder’s top economist, appears to be on the Bernanke bandwagon, saying our fine state could well be among the first to recover from the recession’s economic stranglehold (via The Denver Post). That’s if technology and business spending rise, as some analysts expect.

But there’s still plenty of doom-and-gloom talk out there, including from Bernanke’s associate at the Fed in Kansas City, Mark Snead, branch executive and regional economist for the bank’s Denver office.

Snead says while Colorado is showing signs of stabilizing economically, the state probably won’t outperform the national economy during a recovery because we are heavily dependent on the energy economy, and energy prices are falling, writes the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that the national unemployment rate has risen to 9.8 percent, “dimming prospects of any meaningful job growth by the end of the year.” I’m waiting for the construction workers to say when the recession is really over.