People arrive to seek employment opportunities July 20 at a JobTrain office in Menlo Park, Calif. The recovery lost momentum in the second quarter as growth slowed to a 2.4 percent pace, its most sluggish showing in nearly a year and too weak to drive down unemployment.

Washington ? U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the spring, the government reported Friday, adding to prospects for continuing financial pressures on millions of American families and a long, drawn-out struggle for the unemployed.

While many economists had expected growth to moderate, the reported decline was a jolting 35 percent below the previous quarter — falling from an upwardly revised 3.7 percent expansion rate in the first quarter to just 2.4 percent in the April-June period.

Underlying the government’s report was an unusual crosscurrent running through the economy: Corporate America is flourishing, investing heavily on new computers and other equipment, whereas many consumers are cutting back their spending as they try to pare down debts in the face of weak income gains, high unemployment and a shaky housing market.

“The consumer is still very tepid, but businesses are humming along,” said Shawn DuBravac, chief economist for the Consumer Electronics Association, referring generally to large companies. “But this disconnect,” he added, “can only happen for a finite period of time.”

In other words, if consumers don’t step up their spending — which accounts for 70 percent of the American economy — businesses won’t be investing much more for very long.

“It’s difficult to have a strong sustained recovery without households coming to the party,” said Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

Consumer spending rose a meager 1.6 percent in the second quarter, down from 1.9 percent in the first three months of the year, according to the Commerce Department.

That was down from a growth rate of 3.7 percent in the gross domestic product in the first quarter — a figure adjusted up from 2.7 percent reported earlier.

The nation’s large trade deficit was another major factor in the latest GDP slowdown.

“It’s not very promising,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, N.C. Like other analysts, he sees slower growth ahead as government stimulus spending fades and companies reduce the rate of building inventory that had been depleted during the recession.

In the wake of Friday’s report, a number of economists downgraded their growth forecast for the second half of the year to as low as 1.5 percent — an anemic rate that would likely push up the unemployment rate beyond June’s 9.5 percent figure.

Commerce officials also revised down the growth in real GDP — the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S. after adjusting for inflation — for the fourth quarter of last year, to 5 percent from 5.6 percent, as well as for some prior quarters. Overall, the new data painted a picture of a deeper recession than previously believed.

Government spending and inventory adjustments have powered the economic recovery that began last summer, and they juiced up the second quarter as well. But economists expect tighter public spending, particularly by budget-strapped state and local governments, to be a drag on the economy in the coming quarters.