Consider this:

The last two quarters of economic growth clocked in at just below 4%, the best consecutive quarters of inflation-adjusted growth in gross domestic product in four years.

Yet…about two-thirds of respondents (64%) to an ABC News/Washington Post poll out today say the state of the nation’s economy is “not so good” or “poor,” the highest negative rating in two years. Large majorities (69% in the Post poll; 65% in a different poll) believe a recession is imminent.

But…the nation added 166,000 jobs last month, many more than were expected, and the best jobs showing since May.

Yet…the share of respondents (to a different survey) reporting that jobs are “hard to get” is also at a two year high, while the share saying “jobs are plentiful” is at a two-year low. Overall, consumer confidence has been falling sharply since the summer and it too sits at a two-year low.

There are obvious and no-so-obvious explanations.

Inequality is a big, well-known explanation. You can add all the gross domestic product you want, but if it mostly flows to those at the top of the scale, you end up with an economy that looks great from 40,000 feet up and recessionary on the ground. It’s the “economic growth as a spectator sport” scenario.

The inequality data come in with a lag, but long-term analysis through 2005 shows that income hasn’t been this concentrated since the late 1920s, and, according to the Times, “The [most recent] figures on incomes, both before and after taxes, help explain why so many Americans report feeling economic distress, despite overall economic growth…”

Next on the list of well-known negatives is the housing bust. That impressive GDP report also revealed that the slide in homes’ sales and prices isn’t slowing one bit: real spending on housing fell at a 20% yearly rate last quarter and has been dragging down the economy’s growth for over a year. Homes are the most important asset for middle-class families, and while the vast majority will remain intact after this correction, the anxiety is pervasive. We use to quip that a recession is when your neighbor loses their job; a depression is you lose your job. Replace ‘job’ with ‘home’ and you’ve got some insight into what the polls are telling us.

The polls are also reflecting spillover effects. When 74% think the country is off track in a general sense (that’s from the Post poll, but the same question has been polling up in that range for months), broad discomfort reinforces economic concerns. And looming over all the above is, of course, the Iraq war.

Next, for all those jobs reported in October, the job market is flashing mixed signals. As I report here, the alternative government jobs’ survey is painting a very different picture of the employment situation, showing that the share of the population at work has been falling consistently this year. Historically, such a trend is consistent with a weakening job market.

Finally, there’s the sense among both the public and economists that ongoing headwinds will soon show up in the statistics. It’s widely believed that the mortgage mess and the ensuing freeze in credit markets, the high price of oil, and the tumble in consumer confidence will lead to slower growth in coming quarters (that’s why the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates last week). I don’t necessarily see a recession out there, but if we’re correct (granting that forecasters these days are looking a bit like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football), significantly slower growth in and of itself will eventually show up as higher unemployment and less real income.

Speaking of income, there are mixed signals here too. Looking over the 2000s, one solution to the ‘economy-up/polls down’ puzzle is the earnings not of the average, but of the median worker (the one right in the middle of the wage scale). For full-time workers, men’s median weekly earnings are just about where they started back in 2000 and women’s are about 4% higher, a growth rate of less than 1% per year.

[Since large growth in incomes at the top can distort analyses based on averages, remember this little poem to guide your unbiased analysis:

When it’s inequality you’re seein’

Don’t use the average; use the median.]

On the other hand, the most recent real wage trends have been positive, with wages of most workers beating inflation regularly over the past year (see Table B, column 2).

What’s it all mean?

1) Economies at turning points generate confusing and conflicting signals. We almost certainly haven’t seen anywhere near the last of the damage done by the big headwinds noted above.

2) Ours is a big, flexible economy with a zillion moving parts in the midst of an even bigger global economy with which we are ever more integrated. This offers both new problems and new solutions in uncertain times like these. Globalization, by diminishing workers’ bargain power, has its fingerprints all over the inequality and weak wage stories, while at the same time net gains from trade have offset part of the losses associated with housing over the past two quarters.

3) Most importantly, the economy feels bad to many because the benefits of growth remain highly concentrated at the top. If your analysis of how we’re doing starts and stops with the headline numbers like GDP, or even the payroll jobs number, it is a very incomplete assessment indeed.

As regards that last point, I’ll leave you with an anecdote that sums this all up quite nicely. The public opinion research group, Democracy Corps, released a must-read analysis last week, including reporting drawn from focus groups. They report: “In the focus groups, we handed people a page of positive facts about the economy—and we nearly had to rescue the moderator from the disbelieving and angry participants.”