If you want to know why this economic forecaster is turning grey before your very eyes, or your investment adviser is mumbling incoherently when you dial him up for advice, consider the three important reports that were issued at the end of this week. The jobs report attracted most of the attention, and is bleak; the Federal Reserve Board’s survey of business conditions that preceded the jobs report was decidedly upbeat; and the report from the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform shined a bit of light at the end of the long deficit tunnel. The last item might prove to be the most important of all.

First, the much-watched and very disappointing jobs report. The economy created a measly 39,000 jobs in November, the net result of an increase of 50,000 in the private sector, and a decrease of 11,000 in the public sector. This low level of job creation, combined with the return of about 100,000 people to the labor force, produced a rise in the 9.6 percent unemployment rate of the past three months, to 9.8 percent. Add to the 15.1 million workers unable to find work, 6.3 million of them jobless for 27 weeks and longer, the 9 million involuntarily working short hours, and the 2.5 million who had looked for work in the past year but given up looking in November, and you have almost 27 million very distressed Americans, over 17 percent of the work force.