From everything I can gauge at this point, and this all could change, we are looking at a 1.5% - 2% ish growth rate for the second half of this year.
What this means is that by these standards, we're not going to be in a recession, but it will feel like one.
-1.5%-2% GDP growth is not enough to reduce unemployment meaningfully. Remember that we need to create 150,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with new labor force participants like high school and college grads. Note that the reported BLS job figures are not "real" job adds, they are estimates subject to a statistical confidence interval (plus or minus a hundred thousand or sojobs). The 117,000 reported job gains could have easily been in reality a net job loss.
-This economy is fragile and vulnerable to shocks. One example of a shock is a sharp drop in stock prices, which can erode consumer confidence and business investing (both consumers and businesses stop spending, thereby driving us into another recession). We have yet to see what the prior week's price action will do to consumer sentiment. The consumer is important ... accounting for 2/3 of our economy.
-Things to keep an eye on in the near term, as we have no control over these: Europe. Some European countries (like Greece) have borrowed too much money and can't pay it back. Why is this a problem for Americans? European banks have made loans to deadbeat countries like Greece. Americans are in turn invested in European banks. A good example of this is US Money Market funds. Because interest rates are so low here, US Money Market funds have to chase higher interest rates overseas, and this includes about $1.7 trillion of money tied up in European bank debt. Imagine your shock if you wake up one day and find out 50% of the money you parked in a money market fund, which you thought was "safe," goes "poof" because Greece goes belly up.
-Things to keep an eye on: oil. Oil prices are down sharply, which is good. Most folks are looking at NYMEX WTI (just under $82/bbl) but in reality our area of the country, heating oil and gasoline prices are tied to Brent Crude (right now $104/bbl). Oil is subject to seasonal swings, economic demand, currency swings, and geopolitical events (Mideast unrest that can affect supply). The good news is that oil has dropped a bit, but how long will it last? When the economy picks up, so does oil demand, and when oil prices go up to a certain level, this chokes off economic growth.
-Why is the economy otherwise so crappy right now? Because collectively we're up to our eyeballs in debt AND we're worried about our jobs. If we're busy paying off credit cards and mortgage bills from the zero percent APR borrow and spending binge of 2001-2006, combined with high fuel and food prices, we have that much less to spend on rubber dog$hit imported from China. We're less inclined to spend if we're uncertain about our future employment prospects. This deleveraging process is going to take years and will be a headwind to economic growth. Remember, you and I spending money on stuff is 2/3 of the economy.