With anxiety about the economy bubbling up on Wall Street and at campaign rallies across the country, the government reported Friday that employers added 242,000 workers in February, a hefty increase that highlighted the labor market's steady gains.
Four years ago, at this point in the last presidential election cycle, the jobless rate was 8.3 percent and the economic recovery was in a relatively early stage. Then, worries centered on rising gas prices, deep consumer debt and government layoffs.
Now, the recovery is in its seventh year, the unemployment rate has dropped sharply to 4.9 percent and the private sector has chalked up 72 months of uninterrupted job gains, the longest streak on record.
Oil prices may still be causing ulcers, but this time it is primarily producers who are feeling the pain, because prices have plunged.
The shadow on the otherwise positive Labor Department report was that wages fell 0.1 percent in February, a disappointment after January's promising 0.5 percent increase. That put the yearly growth in wages at 2.2 percent, only slightly ahead of the inflation rate. The average length of the workweek declined by 0.2 hours last month.
Perhaps the most encouraging sign in the monthly statistics was evidence that people who had long been sidelined were being lured back to the job market. The overall share of Americans in the labor force ticked up 0.2 percentage points to 62.9 percent.
"We are seeing job growth across a range of industries, but we're also seeing a polarization in the labor market," said Tara Sinclair, chief economist for the job site Indeed.
Robust demand for hospitality and service workers has been helping keep total job growth count up despite losses in manufacturing, transportation, warehousing and energy, industries that also tend to be dominated by blue-collar white men.
The manufacturing sector, for example, lost 16,000 jobs last month.
"Working people in states like Michigan and Ohio feel the lousy manufacturing job loss and growing trade deficit with China, even if Wall Street and D.C. do not," Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, said in a statement.
"If you're wondering why there's so much interest in political insurgencies among both Democrats and Republicans this year, here's your answer."