We did it, America! Six and a half years after the Great Recession began, and five years after it ended, we have now regained all the jobs lost during the downturn. Huzzah!

O.K., maybe not.

At the previous high, in January 2008, American employers had 138.365 million jobs. With a solid 217,000 positions added in May 2014, that number has now reached a new high of 138.463 million. Yet we can all agree that, if throwing a ticker-tape parade for the economy was a thing that happened, we wouldn’t be doing it. The reasons tell something important about the economic calamity the nation has been through and why public opinion polls show such continued discontent among ordinary Americans.

The May jobs numbers released Friday morning were quite solid, and fit with both analysts’ forecasts and the general tenor of recent data — not just the 217,000 payroll jobs added, but an unemployment rate unchanged at 6.3 percent and hourly wage gains of 0.2 percent for private-sector employees.

But a bit of simple math shows why, even after a progression of solid months of jobs data like May, things don’t feel so great.