It's a very effective sound bite, even if it's not totally true. That is, if the Indiana economy had merely kept up with the average growth of the country over the last decade, instead of lagging behind, we would currently have a budget surplus in the state treasury, instead of the widening deficit facing lawmakers today. It's a hypothetical that's making an impact on the thinking of many state politicians, who paid no mind to our economic shortcomings in times when budgets were in surplus.

But the same recession that has made some realize the cost of ignoring the state's subpar economic performance has also robbed us of the resources to do much about it. Is there any reason to believe that lawmakers will face up to the longer term challenges confronting the Indiana economy when the current crisis is over?

There's a little white lie in this logic, of course. Indiana's budget deficit, like that of most other states, has been caused as much by runaway spending as by deficiencies in tax revenues. The fact that similar crises are being experienced even in states with better-performing economies tells us that our legislature would have probably outspent revenues even if growth here had kept up with our peers.

But that's really beside the point. If the message that Indiana's under-performing economy is costing the state much-coveted tax revenue gets through to enough of our representatives, maybe we will see a resolve to do something about it.

The need for action is made even more urgent by the fact that the effects of the 2001 recession have arguably been more pronounced in our state than anywhere else. Could it be that the same factors that have held back income growth in Indiana -- a smaller footprint of knowledge-based industries, our production-oriented workforce, the lack of access to capital -- have contributed to the pain of this recession as well? It's a delicate question, because we're a long way from sorting it all out.

But there's little question that our recession experience has been a painful one. From January 2000, total employment losses in Indiana maxed out at about 4 percent of the total at the mid-point of last year, with a slight recovery setting in after that point. Our Midwest neighbors grew right past us in 2000, with the painful employment declines holding off in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio until early 2001. That extra year of recession, more than anything, accounts for the result that Indiana's percentage job loss over the last three years is the highest in the nation.

The pattern of decline within the state is even more unsettling. The downturn suffered in 2000 was largely confined to the counties of the state outside of Indianapolis. The nine-county Indianapolis MSA saw growth in the first half of 2000, as measured by total employment, with a much milder decline setting in beyond that point.

But that just underscores what kind of recession we have had. The tech bust and the collapse of business spending in general have battered the manufacturing side of the national economy. When you look at manufacturing employment, the recession of 2001 has been nearly twice as severe as the recession of 1991 and is only eclipsed by the devastating downturn we experienced in 1982 in terms of job loss. Outside of manufacturing, the recession's impact has been much smaller. So it is little wonder that the Indianapolis economy, the state's most diversified, would weather the storm better than the rest of us.

There will always be recessions, and no state economy will be immune from their effects. And Indiana's recession experience may have little or nothing to do with our longer term shortcomings. But if this recession moves us to address obstacles to faster trend growth in the state economy, it may ultimately prove to be a positive experience.