It’s a good time not to be “privileged,” to borrow the political vernacular of our progressive friends. Friday’s labor report showed employers added 263,000 jobs in April as the unemployment rate dropped to 3.6%, the lowest in five decades. The best news is that the biggest beneficiaries of this tight labor market are the folks who struggled during the slow-growth Obama years.

The details in the April report weren’t quite as good as the top line number, due in part to a sizable drop in the overall labor force. This is a surprise given strong job creation, but Labor’s household survey data can be volatile. Partly due to lower labor participation, the jobless rate fell 0.5 percentage-points for Hispanics (to 4.2%), 0.2 percentage-points for high-school graduates (3.5%), and 0.3 percentage-points for workers with an associate’s degree (3.1%).

A Labor report last week showed that the unemployment rate among recent community college (9.6%) and vocational school grads (7.3%) is lower than for those who graduated from four-year schools (12.9%). And less educated Americans are experiencing faster wage and job growth.

Many of the robust job gains came in businesses that hire those with less education. Construction added 33,000 jobs last month, for example, and has added 256,000 over the last year. Most of the new construction jobs last month were in nonresidential and heavy civil engineering work, which suggests that business investment may be picking up after a weak first quarter.

In a separate report earlier this week, the Labor Department reported that worker productivity increased 3.6% in the fourth quarter and 2.4% from a year ago, the fastest rate since 2010. This continues the productivity-growth trend from 2018, which has followed faster capital investment after tax reform and deregulation. This bodes well for faster wage gains over time.