The recent weak jobs report should serve as a wake-up call to economic reality. The news that payrolls expanded by only a meager 120,000 in March was disappointing, but far from momentous. But it should remind investors and business people that earlier signs of strength overstated the economic fundamentals and that the recovery, though reasonably secure, was plodding along and will likely continue to do so.

Economic statistics seem at times to have their own ebb and flow, sometimes overstating and sometimes understating the underlying fundamentals. Sadly, these often meaningless data variations can create false feelings about economic possibilities: enthusiasm when the statistical flow leans toward the strong side or despair when it leans to the soft side. Investors in particular succumb to such swings in attitude, but to a lesser extent, so do business people. So it was with the string of unsustainably good numbers late in 2011 and earlier this year.

Unseasonably mild winter weather created a particularly pronounced distortion in the beleaguered housing sector. Sales of new and existing homes through February indicated growth of 11.4% and 8.8%, respectively, over the same period in 2011. New home construction showed a gain of almost 35% over a year ago. Though the numbers were welcome signs that the worst of the housing slide had passed, the degree of strength was suspect. After all, credit standards at banks remained tight, as they still do, and lending for real estate continued to decline. The housing market still showed an inventory overhang of unsold properties, both in the official statistics and in foreclosures not yet executed. The decline in housing prices, by 4%-plus from the comparable period in 2011 according to the Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, also suggested something less robust than the sales and building statistics implied. The full array of available information was sufficient to conclude stability but little more.