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For decades, economists have tracked the "misery index," a simple formula that adds the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. The result equals how miserable — or not — you feel.

On Friday, the Labor Department released February's jobs report, and the good numbers will further drive down the misery index, already at its lowest level in more than a half-century, thanks to falling oil prices.

The White House cheered the 5.5 percent jobless rate, which was down two-tenths of a point. Employers added 295,000 paychecks, far more than most economists had forecast for the cold, snowy February.

"Job growth was robust and the national average workweek was steady," said Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

And yet no matter what the plunging misery index may suggest, a lot of people don't feel happiness rising. In fact in February, Conference Board's consumer confidence index showed that Americans had a darkening view of the coming six months. Why so glum?

This may be the answer: February's average hourly earnings rose by a meager 3 cents to $24.78. Over the past year, earnings were up just 2 percent.

The Two-Way

Nearly 300K New Jobs In February; Unemployment Dips To 5.5 Percent

Economy

Higher Wages, Lower Prices Give Consumers A Break

And the number of long-term unemployed — people who have been without paychecks for 27 weeks or more — was "little changed" at 2.7 million in February.

In addition, many people remain too discouraged to apply for positions. The labor force participation rate — which measures both workers and job seekers — held at 62.8 percent. A few years ago, it was around 67 percent.

So if millions are not getting raises or finding jobs or even looking, is the misery index measuring the wrong stuff?

What The Misery Index Measures

To make your own judgment, let's step back. The misery measure was invented by Brookings scholar and economist Arthur Okun in the 1970s. He said that when jobs are plentiful and prices low, Americans feel better.

And historically, that's been true. During the "go-go" years of the mid-1960s, the index held around 6 as workers enjoyed a booming job market and low inflation.

But in the 1970s, misery started climbing. The index peaked at nearly 22 in 1980, when a recession and spiraling prices collided and helped end President Carter's re-election bid.

In the late 1990s, job growth and cheap oil pushed the index back down to a comfortable level — around 6 again.

But it didn't last. During the recent Great Recession, misery rode high on the back of double-digit unemployment.

Now the recession is over. Unemployment is way down. Plunging oil and commodity prices have sent the consumer price index down too — prices slid 0.1 percent in the 12-month period ending in January.

If a new CPI report, coming later this month, shows price pressures continued running at the same pace in February, then the result would be a super low misery index. Do the math: 5.5 (the current jobless rate) minus 0.1 (the annual deflation rate) would put the index at 5.4, a level that hasn't been seen since the mid-1950s.

And yet, retail and home sales have been disappointing. What gives?

What The Index Fails To Measure

The answer may be that the U.S. economy has gotten too complicated for such a simple formula. Back in the 1960s, factories could provide even low-skilled workers with decent paychecks. Today, workers with low or rusty skills must find opportunities in a high-tech economy, and compete with low-wage workers in other countries.

"The tepid pace of wage growth in February, 2 percent year over year, in a way nullifies the drop in the misery index," said John Canally, chief economic Strategist for LPL Financial.

Another factor: Americans are carrying debt loads that would have been unimaginable in earlier eras. For example, some 40 million carry student loans that total $1.2 trillion. Add up the student debt, credit card bills and mortgages, and it equals a glum consumer.

In fact, a lot of people would be better off if wages and prices increase. Here's why: Higher wages would make it easier to pay off bills, and rising home values would allow owners to sell at prices high enough to pay off old mortgages. Instead, they are stuck with meager raises and still-too-big mortgages.

"A hallmark of this recovery has been the tepid pace of wage growth," Canally said. Until workers find a way to make employers pay more, "the misery index may not be the best measure of consumer well-being," he said.

misery index

Consumer confidence

inflation

debt

Rabbi Michel Serfaty drives to his first appointment of the day, in a suburb south of Paris, just a couple miles from a notorious housing project where gunman Amedy Coulibaly grew up.

Coulibaly is the self-proclaimed Islamist radical who killed a police officer and later four people in a Kosher market in Paris terrorist attacks in January.

France has Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish communities. For the last decade Serfaty and his team have been working in bleak places like this, trying to promote understanding between the two populations.

Serfaty is still going to the same places since the attacks, but there's now a pair of undercover police officers who now accompany him everywhere. The rabbi says he's more determined than ever.

"These are difficult times for France and especially for French Jews," he says. "But if anything, we realize our work is more important than ever."

The rabbi makes his way into a community center where his French Jewish Muslim Friendship Association has a stand at a local job fair. Serfaty hopes to recruit several more young people to help with community outreach in the largely Muslim, immigrant communities where most people have never even met a Jewish person.

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A poster for the French Jewish Muslim Friendship Association, which works in many poor, immigrant neighborhoods. Eleanor Beardsley/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Eleanor Beardsley/NPR

A poster for the French Jewish Muslim Friendship Association, which works in many poor, immigrant neighborhoods.

Eleanor Beardsley/NPR

"They often have specific ideas about Jews," says Serfaty. "And if they're negative, we bring arguments and try to open people's eyes to prejudices and negative stereotypes. We try to show children, mothers and teenagers that being Muslim is great, but if they don't know any Jews, well this is how they are, and they're also respectable citizens."

Serfaty says people need to realize they must all work together to build France's future.

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Parallels

A German Muslim Asks His Compatriots: 'What Do You Want To Know?'

Muslim Identity In Europe

In English Town, Muslims Lead Effort To Create Interfaith Haven

Muslim Identity In Europe

Britain's Muslims Still Feel The Need To Explain Themselves

The rabbi takes advantage of funding from a government program that helps youths without work experience find their first job. Serfaty takes them on for a period of three years, giving them valuable training in mediation and community relations. Serfaty's recruits also study Judaism and Islam. And he takes them on a trip to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp.

Muslim Identity In Europe

In France, Young Muslims Often Straddle Two Worlds

Serfaty is looking to hire three or four new people. With his affable manner and easy laugh, the interviews are more a friendly conversation. He needs Muslim employees for his work, but French laws on secularism forbid him from asking applicants about their religion. So Serfaty draws out the candidates' views and beliefs in discussion — and through provocative questions.

"What if I say to you Jews are everywhere and run the media and all the banks?" He asks one young woman. "What would you think?"

She tells Serfaty she believes Jews have been largely misunderstood and have a lot to contribute to society.

Some rather frightening misconceptions pour from a withdrawn, young man who's a recent convert to Islam. He's never heard of the Holocaust. He also believes there are 20 million French Jews. In reality France has approximately 6 million Muslims and a half-million Jews.

Serfaty is soon joined at the table by his current assistants, Mohammed Amine and Aboudalaye Magassa, to discuss the candidates. The rabbi says the most important thing is to find young people like them, who harbor no anti-Semitic feelings.

Magassa, 24, says working with Serfaty has been a great discovery. He says it's hard to understand the kind of people who carried out January's attacks.

"These people have weak minds and they are easily manipulated by social networks," he says. "They also don't understand a thing about religion and how it should be practiced."

Amine and Magassa say they are proud to be French and Muslim. They drive me to the station so I can catch a train back to the city center. I ask if they don't sometimes feel their work with the rabbi is futile. Not at all, says Amine.

"We are waking up people's consciences," says Amine. "This is a job that counts and we could have a real impact if there were more of us."

Muslims

Jews

France

On this farewell tour really being a farewell tour

I'm not like a number of stars that I could mention who announce farewell tours, collect the money, and then come back a year later and expect to do it all over again. I consider that dishonest. It doesn't mean I'll disappear. I might do television things. ...

But, on this tour, I really find, not just strange hotels — even though I'm in the luxury penthouse so often — but airports, darling. I mean, going through that whole business. I think your listeners probably think that I just get swept straight through, but it's not the case. And I've never had a private plane, I don't believe in that kind of elitism. But I have to pretty well take all my clothes off. I have to subject myself to pretty ruthless searches — some of them an affront to my modesty, frankly.

On how she's kept her looks all these years

"I looked at my face about 10 years ago ... and I thought to myself, 'What have I done? A pact with the devil? Why am I looking so young and so unconventionally lovely? Why?'"

- Dame Edna Everage

It's so simple. Now, I looked at my face about 10 years ago ... and I thought to myself, "What have I done? A pact with the devil? Why am I looking so young and so unconventionally lovely? Why?"

And, I thought what I need to do is to age myself in some way. I have to look normal. People won't believe it! So I went to Brazil, and I saw the top man there, of course, a cosmetic surgeon. And I said, "Look, I need to look my age!"

He said, "Well Edna your hair is still a natural, very, very natural mauve." I was born, by the way, Scott, with this color. I was. It's very unusual. Very unusual. ... But, I said to the doctor, "Well what can you do?"

And he said, "Well Edna, you must have some little crow's feet! ... We'll give you some crow's feet."

And he said, "What you need – your neckline is perfect! You haven't got that horrible turkey neck." He said, "You need a little soft, double chin. A soft little pillow, a little cushion under your chin." ...

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

Not My Job: Dame Edna Everage Gets Quizzed On Farewell Tours

And do you know what he did? I saw him delving in a sort of white box, a freezer. And he pulled out a little shrink-wrapped package. It looked like a chicken breast. And he said, "We'll stitch this on. And it will settle in. And it will give you a lovely double chin."

And I said, "What is that?" He said, "What? More like what was it, Edna ... That was Elizabeth Taylor's left love handle."

Elizabeth Taylor's love handle is now my soft, little chin. And if you look at it very closely, you can see some indentations where Richard Burton's fingers held. ... Isn't it beautiful? It's history in my face. History.

Updated at 2:54 p.m. ET

The Justice Department is planning to bring corruption charges against Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., alleging that he did political favors for a friend and donor, NPR's Carrie Johnson has confirmed.

A person familiar with case tells Carrie that a decision has been made to go forward with a prosecution.

"It is not clear how long it will take for actual criminal charges to emerge," Carrie tells us.

The case is being handled by the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section in Washington, she says.

News of the planned charges were first reported by CNN.

There was no immediate comment from Menendez or his friend, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen.

Menendez, who has emerged as a recent critic of the Obama administration policy on Iran and Cuba, came under scrutiny two years ago. As NPR's Peter Overby reported at the time, "Melgen ... has been a longtime and generous supporter. [In 2012], his medical practice gave $700,000 to a Democratic superPAC, which spent nearly $600,000 to help Menendez in the November election."

As Peter noted in his reporting, Menendez pressed two State Department officials during a hearing about an American company that was providing port security in the Dominican Republic. But, Menendez said during the hearing, local officials "don't want to live by that contract." And the senator said the U.S. needed to side with the company, ICSSI, not the Dominican government.

What he didn't say was that that ICSSI was partially owned by Melgen.

And, Peter reported, twice in 2009 "Menendez went to Medicare on Melgen's behalf after health care officials alleged the doctor had overbilled by nearly $9 million. ... Menendez has also admitted that he failed to disclose two trips on Melgen's private jet — flights to a Dominican Republic resort community where Melgen has a house."

Menendez later reimbursed Meglen for the flights.

Sen. Robert Menendez