Amid the country's diverse economic problems, it iseasy—too easy—to focus on the dark side of everything. However muchmaterial there is on that unattractive side of the ledger, peopleshould not lose sight of positive developments. Especially wherethe American consumer is concerned, matters have improved markedlyover the last four years, although they're still far fromuniversally robust. With consumption making up some 70% of theeconomy, the improvement raises serious doubts about today'spopular and sometimes extreme pessimism, especially the frequentforecasts of another recessionary dip.

To be sure, the poor jobs market raises all sorts of legitimatequestions about the resilience of the consumer sector andconsequently the entire cyclical recovery. As of June, the LaborDepartment reported that people on nonfarm payrolls totaled just133 million. Though that's a gain of over 4 million from the lowduring the 2008-2009 recession, the level still speaks to a subparrecovery in which net new jobs growth has averaged barely over100,000 a month, not even one-third the average in a typicalrecovery. After more than three years of recovery, the economyremains some 5 million jobs short of its previous peak.

But if jobs growth is disappointing, not the least for themillions without work, it is far from the whole story on theconsumer. In this recovery, American industry has reliedinordinately on overtime and upgrading workers' skills, which hashelped the spending power of the more than 90% of the workforce whohave jobs, even as it has frustrated job seekers.