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Jez Davison, business writer at the Evening Gazette, is a regular blogger on all things business - particularly finance, entrepreneurship and the state of the Teesside economy » 
Karen McLauchlan is the Evening Gazette's deputy business and features editor - with special interest in all things industry, property and arts related » 
Jeremy Middleton is a venture capitalist and the co-founder of FTSE-200 company HomeServe » 
Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » FORGET the feel-good stories, the recession is not yet over for businesses.
A raft of positive data has lifted some of the gloom surrounding the economy - but try telling that to Corus and other firms still mired in the fog.
The steel-making giant is fighting to preserve 2,000 local jobs and the future of its Teesside Cast Products (TCP) plant at Redcar, while others have had to switch off the life support machine altogether.
Invista Textiles is closing its nylon polymer plant at Wilton with loss of 300 jobs, while chemical company Dow is axing an eighth of its Teesside workforce as part of a major cost-cutting exercise.
To these companies, talk of green shoots of recovery is cheap.
But recent data indicates that a more fertile climate may be around the corner.
The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply's (CIPS) purchasing managers' index for services rose above the key 50 level that marks the divide from contraction to expansion, while even the beleaguered construction industry showed the slowest pace of decline for more than a year.
Meanwhile the housing market appears to be rousing from its slumber.
Halifax reported a 2.6% jump in house prices - the biggest jump since October 2002 - while mortgage approvals and house sales are on the rise.
The data suggests an economic recovery could be under way - but they don't herald the death of the recession.
Anybody who suggests otherwise is missing the point.
An economic recovery does not necessarily translate into a genuine business upturn. And while local companies are saying things are not getting any worse, their order books are hardly full.
History shows a typical six-12 month lag between economic and business recoveries, so 2010 is likely to be the year for a revival.
There's no guarantee, though, that this will happen.
Fragile confidence, fears that protectionist policies could stem the flow of international trade and the prospect of higher UK taxes to fund public debt could mean the recent bounce is followed by another slump.
As Robert Lowell, one of America's greatest confessional poets, once warned: "If there's light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of an oncoming train".
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