Builders, small business owners and some retailers and real estate agents have had it tough these past three years when consumers reduced their spending and concentrated on reducing their debt and mortgages instead of buying luxury items.
There's a light at the end of the tunnel for those businesspeople.
Leading economist Shamubeel Eaqub, speaking in Tauranga, is convinced the worst is over and says: "We are emerging from the recession. It will be a moderate, slower and more sustainable recovery.
"We will not see the same exuberance as in the past decade - the financial hedonism is over - and people will not fall into the honey-trap of debt. Their thinking has changed."
He is describing the next phase of the economy as "a return to innocence". Mr Eaqub said that during the recession people put away their wallets and this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
"This is what we saw with our grandparents, who didn't rely on capital gains or debt. People will begin to spend more and invest more - increasing consumption - but it will be at a gradual pace. They will do it off the back of income and not borrowings."
Mr Eaqub, principal economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER), predicted that economic growth would be between 2 and 2.5 per cent over the next few years - and not the 3 per cent that had previously been driven by borrowings - and that employment would creep up.
"People will be more conservative and be prepared to trade down," he said. "For instance, the Pams brand has moved up in shelf space in the supermarkets.
"The first half of this year has been hit by high fuel and food prices. We can't avoid this and this has dampened spending and confidence.
"If families are struggling to put food on the table, then nowadays they don't care how cheap a flat-screen TV is."
Mr Eaqub said that one of the problems was that people were being over-cautious. "Everyone is trying to be more optimistic but they don't want to invest first - they are waiting for the next guy to do it. That's holding back the recovery. Part of it is that business profits are not very good.
"We need to provide some finance to speculators and entrepreneurs - they are the people willing to take risks to kick-start an early recovery - but not in the way we saw with the finance companies.
"Banks are lending a bit more and they will invest in the bigger companies which will lead the recovery. It will be an uneven recovery path for business."
During the recession, many businesses held on to staff and reduced their working hours rather than getting rid of them. "As the economy recovers they will go from working 30 hours to 35 and 40 hours, and you won't [immediately] see a surge in employment.
'The present unemployment rate is 7 per cent but the labour market has a lot of slack. If you take the under-employed people, then the rate would be 13 per cent. But businesses will be in a position to increase output quickly without having to hire new people," he said.
In saying that, Mr Eaqub said the Christchurch rebuild would absorb 20,000 contractors and builders - in one of the hardest hit sectors - and that's getting back to peak employment levels in that industry.
"Builders were paid $30 to $35 an hour and today it's $45 - that's a big jump in costs," he said.
"It will be $25,000 more to build a house [in Canterbury] and that's going to affect everyone else as well. The inflation rate will creep up over the next two years."
On the housing market, he said prices would go sideways for a while until wages and standard of living caught up.
"Prices used to be two-and-a-half times household income, now its five-and-a-half times. You cannot tell me that's sustainable.
"We have seen an overall 10 per cent fall in prices [over the past three years] and any present recovery in the market is coming off a weak base. I think the housing market still has some pain to come," Mr Eaqub said.
June's NZIER consensus forecasts survey predicted that economic growth would rise from an estimated 1.1 per cent in the year ending March this year to 2 per cent next year, with the full effects of the Christchurch rebuild lifting growth to 4 per cent in 2013. Consumer price inflation peaked at 4.5 per cent this year but would ease over the following two years to about 3 per cent, at the top end of the Reserve Bank's target band.
Real wages would remain flat over the next two years, with inflation cancelling out nominal wage growth. The labour market outlook was described as soft, with forecasters reducing employment expectations for next year.
Unemployment is set to trend down from 6.6 per cent in 2011 to 5.3 per cent by March 2013.
The survey suggested that residential building would eventually surge. Short-term projections were for a 2 per cent growth in the March 2012 year, from 1.8 per cent in the March 2011 year. But economists expected a 37.9 per cent increase in 2013.
Long term, Mr Eaqub said some "courageous" government had to reduce public spending on the likes of Working For Families and interest-free student loans.
"We cannot afford to offer free healthcare for everyone and the costs of the ageing population will be a major issue.
"There has to be some form of means test. The consultation to cut out some of the fat has started."