A we await word on whether the U.S. economy really has started growing again, there's this sobering story in The Wall Street Journal about a very telling indicator that's signaling times still aren't very good:

A coveted visa program that feeds skilled workers to top-tier U.S. technology companies and universities is on track to leave thousands of spots unfilled for the first time since 2003, a sign of how the weak economy has eroded employment even among highly trained professionals.

As the Journal says, "the program, known as H-1B, has been a mainstay of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, where many companies have come to depend on securing visas for computer programmers from India or engineers from China."

Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep summarizes the story here: