Economic 'recovery' leaves jobs behind

Reporting from Washington — Still limping two years after officially emerging from the recession and buffeted by a new wave of bad news, the U.S. economy is struggling with problems that run far deeper than higher oil prices, the European debt crisis or auto industry slowdown stemming from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

Serious as those problems are, what's crippling the job market and chilling recovery on almost every front is a confluence of factors that economists and business leaders say are fundamentally reshaping the economic landscape in which Americans live and work.

Taken together, these factors have created a vicious circle: Incomes of average families are barely growing, even as many struggle with heavy debts left over from the boom times. That in turn has curbed consumer spending power. And businesses, seeing little chance for a surge in sales, have had little reason to expand — neither hiring more workers nor paying their existing workers more. Read more.......