SALT LAKE CITY -- Chalk it up as one more thing you can blame on the recession. Bankruptcy filings are way up in Utah. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Utah reports 8,942 people declared bankruptcy in the first six months of 2010, a 31-percent increase over the same six months in 2009. By comparison, national bankruptcy filings only rose about 14 percent in the same time frame.

Raymond James financial adviser Steve Johnson tells KSL's Doug Wright it's not unusual for Utah to lag behind a national trend when it comes to the economy, peaking a year or 19 months after the same thing peaked nationally.

What's the cause for the uptick in bankruptcies?

"It might be a combination of a lot of things," Johnson says, "but the economy [has]… filtered down to a lot of situations." He went on to explain in our consumer-driven society, a lack of confidence in the stores trickles down eventually even to bankruptcy court. Even consumers who have secure jobs are shaken by the situation facing their neighbors, so they consume less.

In turn, that means fewer employers hiring, fewer houses sold, and down the line, more people in dire financial straits.

"It's going to take a while for companies that we see and work with, it'll be awhile before they really get aggressively hiring back," Johnson says.

E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com