Jobs, wages and national debt have a way of burrowing into news headlines. The urgency is in the way the uncertainty of the future can dominate our psyches.

Did you read about the recent jobs report? Were you shocked?

My guess is that this month’s jobs report did not shock many Oaklanders who live in a city with a 16.5 percent unemployment rate - as high as 25 percent in some neighborhoods - and which surpasses the state’s 12.1 percent.

On Friday, reports told of unexpectedly low U.S. non-farm payrolls, a lackluster 18,000 job creation total - the lowest figure in nine months - the loss of 39,000 public jobs and growing concern over Italy, Spain and Portugal’s economies added to the existing worries over Ireland and Greece. Perhaps the articles, which should have filled the local echo chamber were those that brought the elusive numbers back to real people: Not so representative investors and somehow the unemployed became invisible.

Nationally, as Obama and Boehner light the back and forth storm on raising the debt ceiling, despite the likelihood of a timely decision, I wonder how many are considering how to live within a protracted economic slowness, how to create jobs amidst low consumer confidence and how to live within our means.

As Brad DeLong reminds us in this posting on output, consumption and employment, the pattern is not always one of growth, "for example, the United Kingdom never recovered to trend after its post-World War I recession.”