By THOMAS HARTLEY
Business First

From where Paul Hojnacki sits at his president's desk at Curtis Screw Co., a supplier to the auto industry, the awaited economic rebound has started.

"We have experienced this in the past," he says. "Automotive is the first to hit a slowdown, and leads the manufacturing sector out of it. Our backlog looks strong through mid-year."

Hojanacki's Buffalo-based company makes precision screw-machined components and assemblies for automakers, but his positive feeling about 2010 is not keyed entirely to automobiles.

Unlike the company's Buffalo and North Carolina plants, which are almost exclusively automotive, Curtis Screw's Connecticut manufacturing facility also has customers in the medical, military and housing sectors. Its orders began picking up in December.

Hojnacki said the company's automotive business benefitted from the 2009 federal cash-for-clunkers program, which shrank the inventory of new vehicles in the market.

"The majority of suppliers like Curtis reduced or depleted their inventories as well," he said. "So there has been a slow, steady recovery from September to now."

"We are nowhere near as busy as when annual vehicle sales were at 16-17 million. But a pace of 10-12 million is much better than 8-10 million (as earlier industry forecasts estimated)," Hojnacki said.

In North Tonawanda, Wayne Wawrzyniec, vice president of operations at family-owned Ascension Industries Inc., also began noticing an economic rebound in December.

"In general, we are seeing increases in quoting activity, and that is where it has to start," Wawrzyniec said.

Customers of Ascension, which has its plant at 1254 Erie Ave., include many Fortune 500 companies in the metalworking, aerospace, automotive, defense, turbo compressor and automation industries.

"People can hold off ordering only so long. It's been a tough year to year-and-a half, but they can't stop building capital equipment forever," he said.

Wawrzyniec said stepped-up ordering is happening on both sides of the company's major business segments - contract manufacturing and industrial filtration.

Because of the 2008-09 economy, Ascension had to cut its workforce 40 percent, to 90 employees.

But now, as prospects brighten, Wawr-zyniec says employees who were laid off or working reduced hours might go back to normal schedules or be recalled in the second quarter.

While Wawrzyniec is cautiously optimistic about the recovery, Gary Keith, regional economist for M&T Bank, states flat out: The recession is over, and the manufacturing sector is leading the way at the regional and national levels.

Though the recovery is not touching everyone yet - notably the construction and commercial-real-estate sectors - Keith, who is based in Buffalo, says, "The economy has been expanding for two consecutive quarters, and I expect it to continue. We're moving in the right direction. We've passed the tipping point."

For 2010, Keith is forecasting a 2.5 percent increase in the real U.S. gross domestic product. That would be an improvement over 2009, when it fell 2.4 percent - which was the worst since 1946.

But until employment improves enough to inspire consumer confidence, spending isn't likely to grow significantly, Keith said.

John Slenker, state Labor Department analyst in Buffalo, noted that jobs growth is the last sector to rebound from an economic downturn, and in January, U.S. unemployment fell to 9.7 percent from 10 percent in December.

Though job losses continued, factory jobs showed the first increase in three years.

Slenker stopped short of pronouncing the recession over until he gets more data. But he noted that a pickup in the hiring of temporary employees in the last two quarters of 2009 is a strong sign the worst is over.

"Even though orders are coming in and sales are picking up, firms want to make sure (the trend) is sustained before embarking on hiring permanent employees. But we have seen the pace of layoffs slow," he said.