The American economy is doing pretty well.

American workers, not so much.

New numbers show unemployment fell to 4.1 percent in October, its lowest level in roughly 17 years, as restaurant and bar employment rebounded sharply after disruption due to September’s hurricanes. Manufacturing, healthcare, and professional and business services industries also contributed to the economy, adding a total 261,000 jobs during October.

In theory, the supply of available labor should shrink as unemployment falls, forcing companies to push wages higher to attract new employees. But that’s not happening.

Average hourly earnings of non-managerial employees rose just 2.3 percent in October compared to the same month during the prior year. Inflation was running at 2.2 percent in September, the most recent month we have data for. If it holds around there in October, that means average workers would have gotten a real — as in, adjusted for buying power — raise of just 0.10 percent over the last 12 months. In other words: zilch.

Of course, people don’t inflation-adjust their paychecks to fully assess their buying power. They just look at the number. This tendency is known in economics as the “money illusion.”

That could help explain why Americans think they’re doing pretty darn well at the moment, despite decades of flatlining wages. U.S. consumer sentiment in October also just hit a 17-year high.

But if you look closer, there are reasons to think that Americans aren’t doing quite as well as they think.

The U.S. savings rate fell to 3.1 percent, its lowest level since the financial crisis, last month, meaning that Americans have less of a safety cushion to rely on, compared to say the boom years of the late 1990s, when the savings rate hovered between 5 and 6 percent. And they’re increasingly taking on piles of debt, by ramping up spending on credit cards, which could be a sign that American paychecks aren’t quite covering costs of living.