The recession, and the housing crisis that triggered it, have hit St. Louis hard. But other places have it worse.

That’s the nut of a new report out this week from the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, which regularly compares St. Louis to 34 other metro areas on a host of economic and social indicators.

The agency updated their figures recently, and issued their findings at a meeting Wednesday. Here’s a few highlights.

Job growth here has been slow (well, actually, it’s negative). Down 4.1 percent from April 2008 to April 2009, putting us 22nd out of 35 metro areas East West Gateway measures. Our unemployment rate of 8 percent in April, however, was a bit below the national average (8.2 percent).

The region’s “gross metropolitan product” - the sum of all goods produced here - has fallen 4.6 percent from its peak. That’s 30th out of the 35 areas East-West Gateway measures. Not good.

But St. Louis fares better on housing market indicators. It ranks 22nd on percent change in median home prices and 16th in change in number of single family building permits (down 65.4 percent, slightly better than average). And in terms of bank-owned properties, St. Louis is well below average, with 2.2 per 1,000, a sign that the foreclosure crisis has not hit has hard here as some places, or that banks are able to re-sell properties fairly quickly.

Anyway, the full presentation is online, available here. Check it out.

Also, see our story from last week on a similar study by the Brookings Institution, which ranked St. Louis 49th out of the 100 biggest metro areas on how it’s weathering the recession.

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