“The good news is that we are not on the verge of an inflation spiral and we can put people back to work for quite some time without the danger of inflation,” Mr. Berger said.

Wage growth has picked up slightly this year, but gains remain relatively restrained. Over the last 12 months, wages are up 2 percent, only modestly ahead of inflation, which is running at around 1.5 percent, according to the latest data.

While the American economy is not delivering as many gains to workers as hoped for six full years into the recovery, conditions are better here than in many other advanced economies. Europe has been rocked by the continuing drama over whether Greece will exit the eurozone, and concerns are rising about the fallout from the slowdown in China’s once white-hot economy.

As a result, exporters have had to contend with the headwinds from Europe, China and a stronger dollar, leaving domestically focused sectors like health care, education and professional services to supply much of the labor market’s oomph.

White-collar workers in fields like insurance, software and marketing have been in especially high demand, a turnaround from the early days of the recovery, when many new jobs tended to be concentrated in low-wage sectors like retailing and restaurants.

But there is still a feast-or-famine quality in many corners of the American economy.

Since last summer, for example, the financial sector has added more than 100,000 new positions, bringing total employment in finance to just over eight million, the highest since the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed. In June alone, insurers, investment companies and other financial institutions added 20,000 workers.