We’re stuck in slow gear: US Economy

“Few in U.S. move for new jobs, fueling fear the economy might get stuck, too

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 30, 2010
PALM COAST, FLA. -- The recession is claiming yet another victim: Americans' near-constitutional right to pick up and move to a better job.
Labor mobility has nearly ground to a halt in the past two years, and policymakers are increasingly worried that the slowdown is not just a symptom of the nation's economic struggles but also a barrier to overcoming them.
With many people locked in homes by underwater mortgages, only 1.6 percent of Americans moved between states in a one-year period that ended in March 2009 -- a labor stagnation not seen in half a century. Though household mobility has gradually declined for more than two decades, the recent sharp downturn has caused economists to worry that it could harm the already struggling recovery.
"In the past, people tended to move to where the jobs are," said Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan B. Krueger, who oversees economic policy for the department. "Now it is necessary to have more of a strategy to move the jobs -- and create new jobs -- in areas where the people are."
The labor migration rate is down sharply since the start of the economic downturn in 2007 and is just half the rate of a decade earlier, according to William H. Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer who has analyzed Internal Revenue Service and census data.”

“By Neil Irwin and Sonja Ryst

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 31, 2010

The recovery is fading, and a troubling new pattern is setting in: economic growth that is too slow to put Americans back to work.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, grew at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the April-through-June period, the government said Friday, down from 5 percent at the end of 2009 and 3.7 percent at the beginning of this year.

The good news is that it was the fourth consecutive quarter of economic growth and that the expansion continued despite a crisis overseas and palpitations in global financial markets. The bad news is that the growth was below the long-term trend rate at which the U.S. economy expands and is not strong enough to drive down unemployment. And more worrisome, many of the details of the report point to a continued slowdown of expansion this year.”