There are three basic stories that employment data have been telling us in the last few months. The October numbers, released Friday, confirm two of them and undermine the third.

The first story: Jobs are plentiful and unemployment low. Most everyone who wants a job can find one. While the unemployment rate ticked up in October to 3.6 percent, that is still near a five-decade low. And it happened because more people joined the labor force, meaning for good reasons rather than bad. The labor force participation rate rose a bit in October.

The best news of all: The share of Americans of prime working age, between 25 and 54, rose to its highest level of this economic cycle, 80.3 percent, from 80.1 percent in September. At its new level, it matches the high point during the mid-2000s expansion, reached in early 2007.

You certainly see nothing in the survey of households on which the unemployment rate is based that would suggest a recession is imminent or underway. So we can count this story as being confirmed by the new data.