We already know that US jobs “growth” continues entirely on the back of (seasonally adjusted) minimum wage job growth, and since this has been one of our preferred topics exposing the hollow core of the so-called “recovery”, we once again show the divergence between the two job categories that have come to define the New Paranormal: waiters and bartenders, aka the only truly growing (minimum wage) job category, and manufacturing workers – well paid jobs which sadly are no longer being created.

Here is how this “recovery” has looked: since last February, the US has added 360K waiters; in the same time, a paltry 12,000 manufacturing workers have been added as shown in the chart below.

How about longer-term? The next chart shows the cumulative growth (and decline) in waiter and bartender jobs since the start of the depression in December 2007. Waiter jobs added: 1.6 million and rising by 40K in February; manufacturing jobs lost: 1.4 million and dropping by 16K in February.

And that, in one chart, is your “recovery.”