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Brookings Mountain West is pleased to publish the Mountain Monitor for the Second Quarter of 2013. Full Text: http://www.unlv.edu/sites/default/files/50/Brookings-MountainMonitor-2013-Q2.pdf This issue continues our efforts to track the economic recession and recovery in the Intermountain West's metropolitan areas. "Covering the three months from March to June and reporting on the latest data available at the metropolitan level, this edition of the Mountain Monitor—a regional companion to the web-based national MetroMonitor—finds that the rate and state of economic recovery varies considerably across the 10 major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West. Three of the region’s hardest-hit metro areas—Boise, Las Vegas, and Phoenix—continued their strong progress in recouping losses inflicted by the recession on the Monitor’s four indicators of employment, output, employment, and house prices. Four regions that suffered relatively mild recessions and have since experienced steady recoveries—Denver and the three metro areas along Utah’s Wasatch Front, Ogden, Provo, and Salt Lake City—carried their momentum forward into the second quarter. The region’s three remaining major metro areas—Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, and Tucson—all smaller compared to peers in the region, continue to lag behind with the least dynamic economic performance in the region during the recovery period. Several bright spots and a few dark ones could be seen across the metropolitan Mountain West in the second quarter of 2013. A robust quarter of job growth in Albuquerque and a fall in the unemployment rate raised hopes that employment recovery had finally taken hold in the only metro area in the region that was still losing jobs in early 2013. House price growth—already fastest in the nation—accelerated further in seven of the region’s major metro areas. Utah’s three major metro areas resumed their solid performance on most metrics after an unexpected slowdown in the first quarter. Output growth slowed almost everywhere in the region, though, and progress reducing joblessness came to a near-halt regionwide."