[QuikSand]

I isolate gas prices because they have a massively outsized effect on how people feel about prices/inflation. And the way people feel matters quite a lot in all things related to the current state of the economy. Individuals' decisions whether to buy something of consequence are substantially based on feel, and often businesses' decisions whether to expand/invest are as well.

I think the challenge that a job growth mostly just getting back toward former full employment is something less than an ordinary economic expansion is very fair. But the U6 measure suggests we're all but back to what the real "job" economy might bear at this point. Perhaps the recovery period of this whatever-letter-disruption is over, and from here it's back to fairer comparisons.