The U.S. economy will grow about 2% in 2012, roughly the same as in 2011, enough to avoid another recession but not enough to make much of a dent in unemployment.

Faster growth in the second half of 2011 will rescue the U.S. from a downturn, and shows that pent-up consumer demand and business confidence provided enough momentum to overcome a summer of stock market gyrations, a European financial crisis and the debt limit drama in Washington.

After growing at an annual rate of only 0.9% for the first half of the year, gross domestic product grew at a 2.5% rate in July, August and September. Business investment surged at a 16% rate and consumer spending rose at a 2.4% annual rate — not great, but well above what would point to recession.

Unfortunately, growth isn’t accelerating. It is unlikely to grow faster in the fourth quarter than it did in the third, indicating that a sustained recovery still hasn’t started, more than two years after the end of the Great Recession.

It will be the same story in 2012: GDP growth of about 2%. There is little prospect of a major fiscal or monetary stimulus, or any other development that might boost growth. The economy should stay out of the ditch, but it will remain vulnerable to possible shocks — war, terrorism, an oil price shock or a natural disaster. One or more of these could tip the weak economy into recession.

Consumer spending, which comprises about 70% of GDP, is positive but not strong enough to sustain a recovery. It grew at a 2.4% annual rate in the third quarter, twice as fast as in the first half of the year. This was despite a drop in consumer confidence in mid-October to levels not seen since the depths of the Great Recession. Falling income and stubbornly high unemployment are weighing on the minds of consumers, who are, however, borrowing more to spend, with car sales a bright spot.

We expect job creation to continue, after new employment data that brush aside talk by some that we’re in a recession.

Look for job growth of 150,000 a month in 2012. That’s enough to sustain growth in gross domestic product of around 2%, but too low to reduce the unemployment rate and nourish a strong recovery.

The private sector added 137,000 jobs in September. The total was boosted by the return to work of 45,000 Verizon employees who were on strike in August, but it’s still an increase that points to slow growth, rather than contraction. Private-sector employment is key because it represents the lion’s share of employment and indicates the overall direction of the economy.

Government payrolls, meanwhile, continue to shrink. Local government shed 35,000 jobs in September, for a total of 535,000 over the past three years. In the past six recessions, employment by federal, state and local governments was rising during each downturn, helping to soften the drop in the private sector. Not this time.

The jobless rate, meanwhile, is stuck at 9.1%, and it won’t fall much in 2012 as workers discouraged from looking for a job decide to give it another try. An increase in the number of active job seekers — both newcomers to the labor force and laid-off workers who become encouraged enough to start job hunting again — will keep the jobless rate elevated even as payrolls are being expanded.

Along with positive elements of the jobs picture last month, there were some negatives. The number of people working part-time but wanting a full-time spot rose to 9.3 million, from 8.8 million in August and 8.4 million in July. That’s near its record high of 9.51 million in September 2010. Of the 14 million who are unemployed, 44.6% have been jobless for more than half a year, up nearly two percentage points in just the past month. And the broader, so-called “underemployment rate” inched up to 16.5% from 16.2% the previous month.

Looking at industries, a surprise came as 26,000 construction jobs were added, better than in March through August combined. These jobs resulted from a summer spurt in putting up offices, power plants and other structures, as well as work on roads and bridges. Look for this construction gain to tail off in the fourth quarter. Elsewhere, health care continued its predictable increase, adding 44,000 jobs. Manufacturing shed 13,000.

Year-to-date, total job growth is 1.07 million, with private-sector employment up 1.34 million and government jobs down 267,000. More hiring is required to supply the economy with the oxygen needed to grow. The slow pace of private job gains takes a toll, dampening growth in incomes. That, in turn, results in less consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of all economic activity.

After promising to keep a key short-term interest rate near zero at least through the middle of 2013, the Federal Reserve now will try to lower long-term rates, already at record lows. That will keep a lid on borrowing costs for a while, but it won’t do much to help the economy.

Commercial banks will keep their prime lending rate at 3.25% into 2013. The 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for mortgage rates and corporate bonds, should remain near its current rate of 2% until growth picks up, which won’t be sooner than mid-2012.

The Fed’s method of lowering long-term rates is a plan to sell $400 billion worth of short-term debt and buy Treasury notes and bonds with maturities of six to 30 years. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted at this move weeks ago, and those expectations were incorporated into rates, so don’t expect big drops in long-term rates right away.

In setting such a target, the Fed is hoping that more consumers will refinance or buy a house, thereby increasing growth of the economy. But the problem hasn’t been lack of applicants. Real estate agents report deals falling through because appraisals come in below the sales price. Other deals fall through because would-be buyers can’t sell their existing homes. Meanwhile, most businesses have cash -- corporations have accumulated a record $2 trillion. Lower rates at this time won’t induce them to buy new equipment or hire more workers.

Growth remains sluggish, even after previous Fed actions to spur lending. The Fed pegged its rate for overnight loans at near zero in December 2008 and launched a huge purchase of Treasury debt in 2009 and 2010. With all that, GDP grew only 0.4% in the first quarter of 2011 and 1.3% in the second, and is on track for about 2% in the third quarter.

Some Fed watchers see a hidden purpose in the Fed’s latest action: to let inflation creep toward 4% or 5% a year (consumer prices are up 3.8% over the past 12 months), hoping that it stimulates buying and investing and, ultimately, hiring. Fed officials wouldn’t come out and admit this because a central banker’s greatest worry is runaway inflation. In the past, Bernanke has said that 2% a year is the maximum that should be tolerated. But the Fed is willing to put inflation-fighting on the back burner if it can lower the unemployment rate, which is unacceptably high at 9.1%.

Details of the latest move are in the policy statement from the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s rate-setting panel, which just concluded a two-day meeting. Three of 10 members voted against the move, saying they don’t support more monetary stimulus at this time.

The next FOMC meeting will be Nov. 1 and 2. Attention will focus on what else the Fed might do if unemployment remains high and growth, tepid.

The Fed could buy more bonds outright and add debt to its balance sheet, instead of trading short-term bonds for an equal amount of long-term debt -- the more conservative approach so far. But several members of the FOMC would resist another round of bond purchases out of fear that it would sow the seeds of inflation. Other alternatives are few and mostly untried -- charging banks interest for parking their money at the Fed, for example, or even negative interest rates for overnight loans. These too, would meet substantial opposition by some Fed board members.

Orders for longer-lasting manufactured goods will continue growing, one of the few sources of strength in the recovery, slow as it is.

That’s the message from orders for durable goods in September. Orders for durables -- those expected to last three years or more -- send a signal on how strong or weak investment will be.

If confidence in the economy improves -- an even bet right now -- figure that investments in software and equipment will rise at an annual pace of about 9%, July-December, compared with a 7% rate of growth in the first half of the year. Meanwhile, spending on structures is likely to show a modest gain through the fall.

Durable goods orders In September fell by 0.8%, but that’s misleading because of the big-ticket impact of airliners and other civilian aircraft. Orders excluding airplanes surged by 2.4%, with strength across almost all categories, such as machinery and electronics. This strength in manufacturing says the economy will avoid a recession near term, at least.

Elsewhere, inventory spending rose a modest 0.9% in August, close to the average increase of 1% a month during the past year. Spending on plants, warehouses, stores, offices and other structures grew at about a 15.7% annual rate in the April-June period.

This isn’t enough to help much with unemployment. To make real headway, sustained job growth of 200,000 a month is needed, well above the pace of the past couple of months. That number looks beyond reach as managers remain wary, waiting to see whether the economy will slide into a recession. A return of confidence depends on avoiding shocks similar to those in the first half of the year, such as soaring oil prices and the earthquake in Japan.

As CFOs get more strategic, so do their teams.