The unemployment report released Thursday by the Labor Department offered great news for job seekers: Hiring boomed in June.
That good news helped send stock prices to record levels, with the Dow Jones industrial average crossing the 17,000 mark for the first time to close at 17,068.26, up 92.02.
Unfortunately, the jobs report also contained sobering news for people who already have jobs: All of that hiring is not translating into wage hikes. The average hourly wage was $24.45 — just 2 percent higher in June compared with a year ago.
During the past year, consumer prices have risen 2.1 percent. So even in this much healthier economy, with its strong corporate profits and record-setting stock prices, workers are still losing buying power.
President Obama noted the problem while speaking Thursday in Washington at 1776, a tech startup incubator. First, he applauded this year's hiring surge, which has pushed the unemployment rate down to 6.1 percent from 7.5 percent last June.
"We've seen the quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years," Obama said of that 12-month period.
But then he added: "We still have not seen as much increase in income and wages as we'd like to see."