During my morning reading I ran across this article by my friend Cullen Roche, via Pragmatic Capitalist, entitled “The Economic Recovery That Can’t Get Any Respect,” or more commonly known as the “Dangerfield Recovery.”

“I hate to be the guy trying to highlight some of the good in a pretty weak recovery, but this economy just can’t get any respect. I find myself thinking about this on the heels of the employment report which was pretty good. But if you look at the news headlines it ‘missed expectations’ and was actually a ‘net negative’ because of past revisions.

I am going to be ridiculous now and talk about how good some things actually are. So, here are some interesting macro data points that actually point to things being much better than the mainstream media might have us all believe.”

I admire Cullen very much. However, I am going to have to disagree with him on this issue. First, the majority of the mainstream media touted that it was the “strength” of Friday’s employment report that sent stocks soaring into the close. 

Secondly, as I have discussed many times previously, there are many issues with the current calculation of the unemployment rate in the U.S. that obfuscates the economic realities. To wit:

“Is the BLS overstating employment growth? I guess it depends on whose data set you choose to believe. However, there is little denying the fact that with over 60% of the population living paycheck-to-paycheck, stagnant wage growth and declining net worth over the last five years, there is something that simply does not add up. If employment growth were indeed growing as strongly as in the late 90’s, it would seem logical to expect that many of the disparities in the economic landscape should be starting to equalize somewhat. Unfortunately, that has yet to be the case.”

That really is the point that the majority of analysis misses when they point to jobless claims and the U-3 or U-6 unemployment rates. IF, and that is a big IF, employment was as strong as suggested by headlines then wage growth would be rising sharply and economic growth would be running near levels historically associated with “full employment rates.”