THE REAL ISSUE – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  There is a very impressive jobs report out this morning, but the key point here is to read the fine print, if that fine print can indeed be found.  From the Washington Examiner: 

The U.S. has added more jobs in 2014 than in any year since the dotcom bubble year of 1999.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning that payroll employment grew by 321,000 in November, crushing economists' expectations for roughly 230,000.

Including strong revisions to recent months, the economy has added 2.65 million jobs on the year with a month left to go, eclipsing the growth of 2005 and setting the highest mark since the late 1990s.

The unemployment rate held steady at 5.8 percent, as 119,000 people entered the labor force, according to the BLS' household survey.

November's report adds to the evidence that job creation has accelerated throughout 2014, following a prolonged weak and fragile recovery from the financial crisis in 2008.

Job growth has averaged a blistering 278,000 over the past three months, and over 240,000 for 2014 so far, well above the roughly 195,000 average for 2013, which had been the best rate of the recovery up to that point.

Those gains have been enough to lower the unemployment rate by 1.2 percentage points over the past 12 months. That improvement includes a decline of nearly a third in the number of long-term unemployed. The 2.8 million people who have been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer make up nearly a third of the total unemployed, a very high share by historical measures.

November’s gains were evenly distributed across industries, according to the BLS’s survey of businesses, which is subject to revisions in future months as more responses come in. Some of the hiring was in low wage industries: Business services added 86,000 jobs, and retail employment grew by 50,000. But job creation also took place in sectors that traditionally have higher pay, including health care (29,000), and manufacturing (28,000).

There was also good news on wages, which have barely kept pace with inflation throughout the recovery, in the establishment report. Average hourly earnings were up 0.4 percent in November. It remains to be seen whether wage growth will increase as the unemployment rate declines. At $24.66, average hourly earnings have risen 2.1 percent in the past year, right in line with the trend and just above the rate at which consumer prices have risen.

COMMENT:  Hard to argue with that optimistic report, but we will.  The fact is that, over the long term, incomes have not kept pace with the cost of living.  The fact is that many two-income families cannot buy what one-income families bought a generation ago.  The fact is that too many of the jobs being created are hardly jobs to which most Americans aspire.

We have learned that economic statistics can be spun effectively.  The positive numbers in recent months do not offset the long-term negative trends.   There is a reason why the white working class has turned so decisively against Obama, and it isn't because it's optimistic about its prospects. 

December 5,  2014