Home prices show signs of stabilizing. Layoffs are down and hiring is up. Consumers are snapping up clothes and cars, and business is picking up for some of the area’s largest employers.

But overall economic growth remains weak, tempering enthusiasm about a full-fledged recovery and providing a good news/bad news outlook for the foreseeable future.

Most economists aren’t ready to give the economy a clean bill of health, though they generally agree it is no longer on life support.

“I think anybody who’s being candid would say things are definitely better,’’ said Greg Lawson, a policy analyst at the conservative-leaning Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions. “We seem to have stopped digging the hole, but we’re still very early on in the stage of climbing back out.’’

A Hamilton JournalNews examination of the most important economic indicators shows the underlying dynamics are beginning to strengthen, and Ohio’s economy is in better shape than it has been in the past three or four years.

It’s still a mixed bag, but even some of the worst-hit industries such as the housing market are busting out of their slump.

Foreclosures — perhaps the biggest drag on the state and local economies over the past several years — remain a threat, and banks are expected to pick up the pace of filings later this year.

But the numbers in Ohio are down sharply from a year ago, and an improving labor market has offset some of the negative impact of foreclosures, experts say.

In Hamilton, where the jobless rate fell under 8 percent last month for the first time in four years, rising consumer confidence is giving the housing market a boost, said real estate agent Anjanette Frye.

“Median prices are up, and we’re seeing a lot of positives on the jobs front,’’ said Frye, who noted that increasing demand is driving up home prices that were brought down by the flood of foreclosures.

Sales of single-family homes and condominiums in the Hamilton area were up nearly 16 percent last month compared to the same month a year ago, and the median sales price jumped 32 percent, according to the local Realtors’ board.

Those numbers helped the Hamilton area post its best first quarter for home sales since 2008.

“I think the worst is over,’’ Frye said. “The only major concern we would have is if another major employer left the local market. We think any employer who’s going to leave our market and have a huge impact on jobs and housing has already left.”

During the past two years the number of layoffs has been reduced dramatically, even when government jobs are included, according to the latest report from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

In 2011, Ohio-based employers announced 9,118 job cuts, which was 58 percent better than the 21,592 that were reported in 2010, the firm’s data show.

Another half-million jobs still needed

Now for the bad news: Employers may have stopped the bleeding, but employment is still off by nearly a half-million from the state’s peak of 4.85 million jobs in March 2000, according to figures from the state jobs department.

The Buckeye Institute’s Lawson said it could take nearly a decade to get back to that level, even under ideal conditions.

“Even if we had blistering economic growth, which we’re not having, we’re still at least five years away’’ from peak employment levels, he said.

Using job-growth rates from the 1990s boom era, Lawson said, Ohio employment would return to peak levels by 2017. But most likely, a full recovery won’t happen until the early 2020s.

“If we saw the unemployment rate going down and the labor force expanding, then we could say that things are definitely humming along,’’ Lawson said. “Right now, we’re on a slow track.’’

Ohio employers have added more than 128,000 jobs over the past two years, which helped lead to a March unemployment rate of 7.5 percent. That was below the 8.2 percent national rate, and far below the statewide peak of 10.6 percent in July 2009.

But unemployment is still at historically high levels, and because many of the new jobs don’t pay as well, many people are forced to seek part-time work or make other sacrifices to make ends meet. Some of the decline too can be attributed to discouraged workers dropping out of the labor force.

Toni Jacobson said the jobs figures for the Hamilton area don’t reflect the economic reality.

“Just because the unemployment rate has dropped does not mean the economy is improving,’’ Jacobson said. “It’s giving a false impression. Believe me, I know because I got laid off in February for the second time in four years. I don’t see any improvement in the job market from 2008.’’

Brewing headwinds

The U.S. Department of Commerce on Friday reported that gross domestic product — the value of all goods and services — grew by 2.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, less than had been expected and down from 3 percent growth in the previous quarter.

The report underscores the Federal Reserve’s decision last week to keep interest rates low to help stimulate an economy still susceptible to hiccups such as rising gas prices.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen in the Middle East, and there are a lot of issues that could drive gas prices up in the summer,’’ Lawson said. “That could, in fact, create a drag on the economy.’’

Unknown developments, such as the domestic impact of Europe’s continuing economic problems, could also stall the U.S. recovery.

High gas prices and Europe’s problems “haven’t yet knocked us completely off course, but the headwinds are brewing,’’ Lawson said. “We really don’t know how bad it could get.’’

In the meantime, the economy continues to chug along with consumers doing most of the heavy lifting.

Consumer spending, which drives about 70 percent of economic growth and much of the demand for workers, has picked up after years in which consumers saved more of their money and paid down credit card balances.

Ohioans who cut back on spending after the recession hit are once again taking on long-term debt like car loans and turning to their credit cards for major purchases.

The average credit card debt in Ohio climbed $192 from the end of February last year to $3,648 by the end of the same month this year, according to the latest figures available from Experian, one of the three main credit bureaus.

Credit card spending ticked up at an even faster rate in the Hamilton area, where average credit card balances grew from $3,212 to $3,602 over the same period.

“Rising debt is a mixed blessing,’’ said Bill Even, an economics professor at Miami University in Oxford. “On one hand it suggests that consumers feel a little more confident about their jobs, and about the outlook for the future.’’