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The U.S. labor market was undeniably strong in 2019, marking its 10th straight year of job gains. That doesn’t mean there aren’t cracks beneath the surface.

U.S. employers hired a solid 145,000 workers in December and unemployment remained at a half-century low, at 3.5%, data released Friday by the Labor Department showed. While hiring slowed from November’s robust pace, economists by and large expect job gains for the foreseeable future, even if they moderate from an average of 174,000 a month over 2019.

It’s a lonely endeavor to argue that the job market isn’t quite as rosy as it seems at a time when analysts and investors are celebrating record job creation. Things have clearly gotten a lot better since the dark days of the financial crisis and recession. But lost in the headlines and historical sweep is the reality that for many Americans, this job market isn’t as strong as it looks.

It makes sense, when you step back and think about it. Gross domestic product has been running at about 2%, low compared with rates of growth in past economic cycles. “The economy is barely running lukewarm,” says Calvin Schnure, a former Federal Reserve economist who now works at the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, referencing the gap between the picture the labor market paints and the broader economy.

One problem with the monthly, aggregated Labor Department reports, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics’ chief economist Ian Shepherdson, is that they don’t tell the whole story and aren’t reflecting what the experience is like for a lot of people. “It’s a good economy for the best educated,” Shepherdson says, with the divergence between that cohort and everyone else largely unaddressed.

To get a deeper view of the current labor market, Barron’s looked at about two dozen employment metrics. Plenty are strong. But others show there are some caveats to the narrative that the American job market is going like gangbusters.

Consider workers’ wages. The big mystery, Shepherdson says, is why this long spell of job growth hasn’t translated into higher pay. “I can’t imagine it’s ever going to be better than now to ask for a raise,” he says, and yet employers hiring in December managed to add workers while paying wages that rose at the slowest pace since August 2018. For context, wage growth in previous economic cycles was around 4% annually, as opposed to the 2.9% annualized increase in December.

There’s one explanation for sluggish wage growth that is obvious yet crucial for investors to remember. Jobs remain concentrated in lower-paying service-sector positions, where pay gains in some industries, such as education and health care, are running below overall wage growth and hardly keeping up with even tepid inflation. Many service jobs pay much less than goods-producing jobs, and the U.S. economy’s shift to one dominated by the service sector continues.

This dynamic has been particularly true for women in the service sector, Shepherdson says. The gender pay gap, of course, is well documented. But it takes on heightened significance at a time when women are holding more jobs than men for the first time in about a decade; women had 50.04% of jobs last month, surpassing men on payrolls by 109,000, according to December data.

There are other places where it’s evident that the job market is a bit less hot than headlines suggest. Take the rate of prime-age labor-market participation, which is still trending a bit below historical levels. While some of that is due to an aging population, the current rate suggests there might still be prime-age people shut out of the workforce. The participation rate of those ages 25 to 54 stands at 82.9%, below the 83.1% at the start of 2007 and the 84.1% at the start of 2001.

Another metric to consider: While unemployment is at a 50-year low, the duration of unemployment for those who want a job and don’t have one is still higher than precrisis levels. The average length of joblessness was 21 weeks in December, up from the summer and above the average length of about 16 weeks at the end of 2006. Meanwhile, the length of the average hourly worker’s week has slipped in recent months. Some economists consider this metric a leading indicator for the broader job market.

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Last but not least, consider the so-called quits rate. This gauge, a favorite of former Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, has slipped from stronger levels in 2018 and 2019. Quits are a good indication of workers’ confidence in the labor market—either because they are immediately hopping to a new job or believe they can quit and easily can land a new one. The recent decline in quits isn’t alarming by any stretch. But the trend nonetheless suggests workers have less incentive and confidence lately to leave their jobs for better ones.

It would be remiss to not mention the languishing manufacturing sector, where companies continue to shed jobs as they deal with trade-war fallout and trouble stemming from Boeing’s production halt on its 737 MAX jet. Factory jobs make up only about a 10th of overall U.S. employment. Manufacturing job losses bear watching, though, because of the sector’s premium pay relative to many service jobs—making for a potentially outsize effect on consumer spending. In December, factories cut 12,000 positions. For the year, the sector added a total of 46,000 jobs compared with 270,000 in 2018.

None of this is to say the job market will meaningfully weaken soon, especially given the Federal Reserve’s assurance that it intends to hold rates steady this year. But investors might consider looking under the labor market’s hood.

Write to Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@barrons.com