The last jobs report of 2017 comes out on Friday, giving us a chance to step back and look at the entire year. Tomorrow’s jobs report also marks the 10^th anniversary of the start of the Great Recession. My expectation is that the December data will confirm that, while by some measures the economy has almost recovered its immediate pre-Great Recession health, by other measures it is still notably weaker than in 2007, the last year before the Great Recession hit. Further, as I have often noted, 2007 should not be considered a benchmark for a fully healthy economy for America’s workers. Almost all labor market measures were notably weaker in 2007 than they were at the previous business cycle peak in 2000. There was very little reason to think that the U.S. economy in 2007 was at full employment. If one looks at the stronger business cycle peak of 2000 as a more appropriate benchmark, the economy in 2017 looks even weaker, and the case for continued policy support for faster growth is strengthened. Many working people are still not seeing the recovery reflected in their paychecks—and the economy will not be at genuine full employment until employers start offering workers higher wages.

In this post—and tomorrow when the December numbers come out—I’m going to look at average payroll employment growth over the last several years. Because there is always a bit of volatility in the monthly data—especially in the household series—taking a year-long approach allows us to smooth out the bumps and take stock of all the key measures: payroll employment growth, the unemployment rate, the employment-to-population ratio, and nominal wage growth.

The figure below shows average nonfarm employment growth for 2007–2016 and for the first 11 months of 2017. With an average of 174,000 new jobs being added each month, job growth in the first 11 months of 2017 was slower than in any year since 2011. But even at this slower pace of growth we are not only absorbing population growth, but also chipping away at the slack remaining in the labor market—namely workers who continue to be sidelined and who I expect will enter or re-enter the labor market as opportunities for jobs and better paying jobs expand. If December’s numbers are in line with payroll employment growth over the last several months, it will be more proof that the economy is continuing its slow but steady march towards full employment.

Further evidence of a steadily improving economy is the unemployment rate, which continued to fall through 2017 to a low of 4.1 percent in November. It is now far below its Great Recession peak (10.0 percent), and even below where it was when the recession began (5.0 percent). Despite this low water mark, there is still room for improvement. The unemployment rate came in at an average of 4.4 percent in 2017 (without December). In 2000, the unemployment rate averaged 4.0 percent, and fell below 4.0 percent for five months that year. Given that 2000 saw no pronounced acceleration of inflation, and given that inflation remains below the Federal Reserve’s preferred target today—and has actually decelerated in recent months—it seems safe to say that the unemployment rate can continue to fall without risking rapidly accelerating inflation.

Furthermore, today’s unemployment rate is associated with additional slack by other measures than in the past. For example, the share of prime-age workers with jobs—the prime-age employment-to-population ratio (EPOP)—remains quite depressed relative to previous job-market recoveries. The prime-age EPOP has improved greatly in the recovery and is now at 79.0 percent, having finally successfully passed the low points of the last two full business cycles. But, as the figure below shows, it’s still below its pre-Great Recession peak (80.3 percent) and significantly below its full employment peak of 81.9 percent. That suggests there still is ample room to pull in workers who remain idled by the economic crisis.

The last note I’ll say about the unemployment rate is the fact that at 4.1 percent in November, or 4.4 percent over the year, it vastly understates different experiences of the labor market. For instance, young workers face far higher rates of unemployment (9.6 percent in November), as do workers of color. The figure below shows unemployment rates by race and ethnicity. Shown in the dark blue line, the black unemployment rate has come down significantly in the recovery, but it still is elevated at 7.3 percent. Because the roughly 2:1 ratio of black to white unemployment rates—historically accurate but not immutable with policy—each additional reduction in overall unemployment that can be attained actually provides disproportionate benefits to workers of color. Given that these workers have historically faced discriminatory barriers to labor market success, this is an enormously valuable benefit of chasing full employment.

The last, but not by any stretch least, measure to watch on Friday is nominal wage growth. In November, nominal wages grew at 2.5 percent over the last year. The figure below illustrates year-over-year nominal wage growth for production/nonsupervisory workers and total private-sector nonfarm employees. The production/nonsupervisory series roughly represents the bottom 82 percent of private-sector payroll employment; over the last several months it’s been running about 0.2 percentage points slower than the overall series, indicative of some growth in wage inequality. The topline series, however, remains below target levels and has been shown no sign of acceleration. Over the last three months, average growth was 2.5 percent. During that same period last year, the year-over-year September through November growth rate averaged 2.7 percent. Then, it appeared like we could be reaching a consistently higher rate of growth—faster than the 2.4 percent we saw for the same months the previous year. Unfortunately, these signs of potential acceleration have been dashed. Wage growth in recent months has been slower on average, below target levels, and certainly provides no concerns over spiraling inflation.

While payroll employment growth remains solid enough to keep up with population growth and absorb new and returning entrants, the prime-age EPOP and nominal wage growth continue to lag behind the more optimistic unemployment rate. I expect December’s numbers on the economy to confirm the patterns we’ve seen from this year so far. We are getting closer to the pre-Great Recession economy, but still have a ways to go to reach type of economy we experienced in 2000.