With an intensity akin to flattening my nose against a crystal ball in an attempt to peer inside it, I've been watching for indicators of how long it will take our Inland Northwest economy to return to what we collectively might call "normal."

We all crave normalcy, I believe, even though life offers little of it. In this case, though, a tough recession followed by several years of spirit-depleting stagnation has made us especially needful for a return to the warm light of relative prosperity.

A general acknowledgment that some things—job, wage, home value, investment return, and retirement expectations, for example—might not return for years to how they were in the past has spawned expectations of a possible "new normal."

Rather than continuing to ponder exactly when the economic dust will settle and that new normal will arrive, though, some analysts' views have caused me to consider the notion that, to a degree, it already has.

For the foreseeable future, it's clear that jobs are going to be scarce even for many advanced-degree holders, and the median home sale price here is going to remain well below what the highs it reached in the last decade. Also, investors will be basing their strategies on more tepid returns, commercial construction won't be bolstering the economy any time soon the way it did for a long stretch before the downturn, and many aging workers will be putting off retirement to some indefinite future date.

The challenges of how business owners, workers, and others here are adjusting to that new normal, while they wait for conditions to improve materially and broadly, will be the topic of an occasional series by that name beginning in this issue of the Journal.

The intent here isn't to dwell on the negative impacts of the protracted economic downturn, but rather to spotlight how people are adapting and in some cases, to borrow a phrase I often heard my mother use, "turning lemons into lemonade."

To provide some national context, The Kiplinger Letter, which issues forecasts designed to assist in management decision-making, focused a recent issue on trying to define the anticipated center line, or new normal, for the rest of this decade.

It predicted the following:

•The term "full employment" will be redefined to reflect lower expectations. Kiplinger predicts that the old target of 5 percent unemployment that economists considered optimal for the workforce will rise, with policymakers viewing 6 percent as acceptable, given that the rate now has hovered stubbornly above 8 percent for three years.

•The rate of homeownership will dip some more, then settle at around 66 percent—three percentage points lower than it was in 2006. Mortgage rates, meanwhile, are predicted to climb back to around 8 percent by 2020.

•Growth in gross domestic product, which is the total value of all final goods and services produced in the U.S., will average 2.5 percent a year. That's up from what it was at the bottom of the recession, but well below the 2.9 percent average annual growth for the decade before the steep drop in 2008 and 2009. Kiplinger says that difference translates into "billions of dollars in missed production."

Add to some of that rather glum outlook for the next eight years the possibility that the Inland Northwest, as during past cycles, will lag the nation in emerging from the downturn, and there seems little to cheer about.

Forecasts aside, I'm an optimistic by nature, and I see all sorts of anecdotal examples that the tide is rising and that meanwhile people are adapting well to the new normal. Hopefully, our series will capture some of those stories of resilience, resourcefulness, and triumph.