The American economy remains weak, with growth at the lowest level in more than three decades. In April and May, 54,000 fewer jobs were created than originally estimated, and the 215,000 jobs added in July didn’t change the picture of a faltering employment market. Wages have been rising at the slowest pace since the 1980s. Current numbers, according to the Financial Times, show a mere 0.2% rise in employment costs, or wages, against the 0.6% that the financial world expected.

It is the nature of recessions that the bigger they are, the bigger the comeback, yet the period since the Great Recession ended in 2009 has seen the weakest U.S. recovery since World War II. The little improvement we have seen hasn’t benefited a significant percentage of Americans. It is also the nature of recessions that they occur about every eight years; America is ill-prepared to weather the one on the horizon.

Yet there is little urgency from the White House these days regarding the economy. And what is the focus of the current presidential candidates and the media covering them? Email servers, the fantasy of overturning the Affordable Care Act, immigration and criminality, CEO pay and other matters with only the barest relation to what matters most: economic growth and the jobs that come with it.

Maybe the White House and those who aspire to it need to be reminded of how grim the past several years have been for millions of Americans and how little has been accomplished in an era of trillions in quantitative easing and near-zero interest rates.

The U.S. has added 11.5 million jobs during the five years of labor-force expansion through June, but the number of full-time jobs today is 0.7%, or 822,000, lower than it was at the prerecession peak—and that was eight years ago. What we have seen within these numbers is a dramatic and unexpected increase in part-time jobs. Millions more are jobless or not looking for work though they are of prime working age.