From the looks of the latest monthly snapshot of the American labor market released by the government on Friday december 2012, a long-bleak jobs picture is finally recovering. November saw 146,000 net jobs added to the economy, marking the fourth straight month of decent employment vigor.

But the recent consistent growth is masking a deeper truth: many of the jobs being created aren’t the kind of high-paying ones needed to bolster an economic recovery.

More than half of the jobs created last month were in lower-wage industries, such as retail and hospitality. Hourly earnings in those service sectors are far lower than in areas such as construction and manufacturing, which saw no job growth last month and were two of the hardest-hit by the recession.

“You have these data blips coming in, and everyone wants to make something of them, but the jobs that are being created just aren’t great jobs,” said Kent Smetters, a professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

“Nothing’s really changed. It was a good report, but problems persist — and significant ones,” Brusuelas said. “We’re adding jobs at about 150,000 a month, the majority of them are low-paying jobs, because this has still not been sufficient to bring the unemployment rate down for the right reasons.”