Investors and traders here were hoping that a spurt in job creation would dispel some of the gloom that has stock markets in turmoil, investors watching a decline in the value of their savings and pensions, and Federal Reserve Board chairwoman Janet Yellen and her monetary policy committee scrambling to back off an implied promise to raise interest rates four times this year. The latest jobs report provided a bit of cheer, but not enough to lift the weight of bad news from the shoulders of economy watchers. The economy added 151,000 non-farm jobs in January, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.9 percent, and average hourly earnings rose a non-trivial 0.5 percent, bringing earnings growth for 2015 to 2.5 percent, not bad in the absence of significant inflation, and showing signs of picking up as the labor market tightens. But add workers too discouraged to look for jobs and part-timers hoping for full-time work, and the so-called U-6 unemployment rate remains stuck at a tick below 10 percent. Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, a provider of financial information, summarizes the report as containing, “Signs of a slowdown in hiring, still-weak annual pay growth and disappointing survey data…”.

Foreigners tend to think of us as an optimistic, can-do bunch. And by and large we are. But two old strands in America’s sometimes view of the world are emerging. And they are far from optimistic. One holds that all of the great, productivity-enhancing, growth-producing inventions have already been made. The other is that our economy tends to over-save and under-invest, leaving a spending gap that the government must fill if demand is to prove adequate to maintain full employment.