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Recession Briefing 12.31: Brits Move Back Home

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

Nearly 500,000 British adults aged 35 to 44 moved back into their parents’ home in the past year. Devastated by the recession and rising rates of relationship breakdown, many had no option but to return to mother. (Daily Mail)

Companies in the U.S. expanded in December at the fastest pace in almost four years, signaling the economic recovery is gaining speed heading into 2010. (Bloomberg)

Employers say they plan to tread carefully in the coming year, and those that are hiring say they will wait until the second half to fill jobs. (Los Angeles Times)

The worst of the recession is over and Britain’s economy will slowly recover in 2010, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a New Year’s message Wednesday. (Associated Press)

Robert Shiller: Unadulterated belief in capitalism helped to fuel the bubbles that led to the crash. Yet old ideas about markets — especially the notion that they always go up — have changed far less than you’d think. (Newsweek)

To help you accomplish your many New Year’s ambitions of getting your finances back on track, here’s a year’s worth of personal-finance aspirations, timed to major holidays to raise your chances of success. (Wall Street Journal)

Fewer Americans filed claims for unemployment benefits as 2009 drew to a close, pointing to an improvement in the labor market that will help sustain economic growth next year, economists said before a report today. (Bloomberg)

Our recession predictably continues to be one in which real gross domestic product and spending outperform the labor market. Casey Mulligan notes that this pattern differs from the 1980-82 recession and suggests that public policy could be doing a better job this time of raising employment. (New York Times/Economix)

About $50,000 in Federal stimulus money has been allocated for new rubber-tiled tennis courts in Bozeman, Montana — sparking a brouhaha between politicians over who is to blame for what many see as a misuse of the funds. (Associated Press)

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast the industries in which it expects the most job growth over the next decade. The great bulk of the new jobs — 96% of the increase in new employment — are projected to be created by service industries such as health care services or business services. But there are still a few outliers. (Huffington Post)

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Tags: business, economy, family, jobs, stimulus