The recession is here to stay. Already longer than the average recession, it will hang around through most of 2009.

“It looks like (the recession) will last at least through the middle of next year,” said Wachovia Corp. Senior Economist Mark Vitner. “Probably it will bottom out then but the recovery process is likely to be very long and agonizing.”

He said that typically after a recession ends, unemployment tends to continue rising for at least a year.

“We are not likely to see a return to good economic times until late 2010 or early 201l,” he said Monday.

Florida, he said. “may take longer than the rest of the country.”

Florida’s recession started about six months earlier than the nation's recession.

University of Florida Economist David Denslow says the state’s economy started declining during the summer of 2007. The National Bureau of Economic Research said yesterday that the nation entered a recession one year ago, last December.

Denslow expects the downturn to continue through 2009. “My guess is we’ll see declining output in the first half of 2009 and essentially flat in the second half,” Denslow said Monday.

Recovery, he says, may come for Florida in the first half of 2010.