Recession Is Kaput; Now for the 'Smart Economy'

But most remain upbeat about their future: Pew survey

(NEWSER) - The economy is doing a number on those aged 18 to 34, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center :

• Half say they have taken a job they didn't want.
• More than a third have gone back to school because of the job market.
• Nearly a quarter have taken unpaid work to gain experience.
• About a quarter have moved back in with the folks.
• More than 1 in 5 have postponed having a baby, and about the same number have put off getting married.

This kind of stalled job growth often leads to recession: David Leonhardt

(NEWSER) - Bleak reading for the White House ahead of the president's jobs speech : David Leonhardt of the New York Times thinks the odds of a double-dip recession have spiked of late and might be around 50-50 now. The US had been putt-putting along in what looked to be a modest recovery for about a year until this spring, when job growth stalled. Since then, we're averaging about 40,000 new jobs a month, he notes, and "the last time such a meager increase did not coincide with a recession came in the 1950s." More»

Paul Krugman: We have to worry about jobs, not the deficit

(NEWSER) - The US made a terrible mistake last year by not spending enough money on the economic recovery, and it's on track to repeat the error on a larger scale this year, writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times . Deficit hawks were allowed to overrule those concerned about job creation, and the results can be seen in today's sputtering recovery and lousy unemployment numbers . Now is not the time to be obsessed with "fiscal austerity," he warns. It's the same mistake policy-makers made in 1937 that prolonged the Great Depression. More»

Obama, Boehner must promote American confidence

(NEWSER) - There’s a big economic problem that’s been keeping a low profile: American confidence, writes David Smick in the Washington Post . “Between $2.5 trillion and $4 trillion of private capital is waiting on the sidelines to ‘reliquify’ a new era of American confidence and innovation,” he notes. Now, we need a bipartisan effort to create an environment that inspires optimism. More»

Short-term fixes needed, but they hurt our long-term prospects

(NEWSER) - Steven Pearlstein surveys the mess of our economy and finds that we're in quite a pickle: "To fix the economy in the long run, we have to weaken it in the short run—yet weakening it in the short run makes it just that much harder to fix it in the long run," he writes in the Washington Post . "Any way you look at it, the economics are terrible, and the politics are even worse." More»