The bustling United States economy is beginning to benefit some American workers who have not gotten a taste of the recovery and have been most in need of relief.

That picture was reinforced by a report on Friday from the Labor Department, which showed an increase of 148,000 jobs last month. The figure fell short of economists’ expectations, but some of the most impressive job gains in the past year were in blue-collar and service industries that pay a decent salary.

Over all, average hourly earnings were 2.5 percent higher in December compared with the year before, scarcely keeping up with inflation. But other data shows that wages have increased most for the least-educated workers and for people in many industries that are generally low-paying.

“Growth is strong, and the benefits of this growth have been widely shared,” Jed Kolko, the chief economist for Indeed.com, a job-search site. “This has been a year in which some of the gaps in the economy that had been growing narrowed a bit.”