The United States economy emerged from recession in June 2009 and has been growing for nearly five years. Yet this week, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of American adults found that 57 percent still think the economy is in recession

It’s not hard to see why. People don’t take this as a technical economic research question; they take it to mean, “Is the economy good?” And for much of America, despite years of modest gross domestic product growth and strong stock market gains, the economy isn’t good.

Two trends are responsible. The labor market is still slack, meaning millions who would like to work can’t, and those who do work have limited ability to demand higher wages.

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Last year, Emanuel Saez — an economist from the University of California, Berkeley — made headlines with the finding that 95 percent of income gains from 2009 to 2012 accrued to the top 1 percent of earners. But this finding was not about the rich doing well; their incomes are actually growing a little more slowly than in the last two economic expansions.

Instead, it reflects the failure of most of America to recover at all, with real market incomes for the 99 percent rising just 0.1 percent a year. Higher corporate profits and higher stock prices have not translated into meaningfully higher wages.

The other trend is a long-term one: For four decades, even in stronger economic times, wage gains have not kept pace with economic growth. Wages and salaries peaked at more than 51 percent of the economy in the late 1960s; they fell to 45 percent by the start of the last recession in 2007 and have since fallen to 42 percent.

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When the economy does grow, that growth disproportionately accrues to the owners of capital instead of to wage earners; and in the last few years, weak growth and abundant labor have made that pattern even stronger than normal.

Of course, if you poll people, they won’t describe that situation to you exactly. They might say, “My sister can’t find a job, and I haven’t gotten a raise in three years.” Or they might tell you, incorrectly but understandably, that we’re in a recession.

Our main economic policy debates still focus around what policies will improve overall economic growth, instead of the problem of growth not adequately translating into improvements in employment and wages. This is especially true among Republicans, but it also creeps into the Democratic perspective on the economy.

Republicans call for lower taxes, fewer transfer payments and less regulation. In some cases, they focus on the need to reduce the public debt or to tighten monetary policy. Regardless of whether these policies would bolster G.D.P. growth, they have little to do with tightening the labor market after a recession or with increasing the share of G.D.P. that goes to wages and salaries.

Democrats are much more focused on the wage and employment problems. The Obama administration has expanded transfer programs that raise families’ real incomes even if their wages don’t rise, and it has called for a rise in the minimum wage. But as Kevin Drum points out, these policies mostly benefit the poor, and they provide little help for middle-income families whose incomes have also stagnated.

On Monday, Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, held a briefing about the Economic Report of the President, which features a chart showing how productivity has pulled away from wages since the 1970s. I asked him what policies, other than raising the minimum wage, the president sees as useful for raising the share of G.D.P. that goes to wages.

To my surprise, Mr. Furman responded with a list of education and human capital policies, including expanded prekindergarten, improved access to higher education, holding colleges accountable for quality and better apprenticeship programs. He also promoted policies to raise overall growth, like corporate tax reform.

These policies might promote wage growth over the long run (or, in the case of prekindergarten, the very long run). But they are not policies specifically aimed at tightening the labor market.

The one period of really robust wage growth in the last 40 years was the late 1990s, when the labor market was tight and workers could effectively demand higher wages in exchange for their labor. Fiscal and monetary policies that aim to recreate that situation might finally get Americans to stop saying we’re in a recession. Yet that’s not the focus of the conversation in Washington.

This article is a preview of The Upshot, a New York Times site dedicated to demystifying politics, economics and other subjects. It will make its debut on nytimes.com this spring. To learn more, follow David Leonhardt on Facebook and Twitter. You can also follow Josh Barro, a reporter for The Upshot, on Twitter.



