The average U.S. work week was unchanged at 33.8 hours.

Maybe the USA needs a 35-hour week so that Americans are incited to work a bit more than their current lazy habits?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

I think you could certainly argue that 166k is not bad given the state of things, but when you have a number like that spread over the business cycle, it's pretty weak.  Now, in fairness, Bush didn't need as much growth in the recovery to get back to something near the NRU, since the peak unemployment rate after the '01 crash was roughly two full percentage points lower than the peak in the recession of the early-1990s (6% vs 8%).  And the extremely low unemployment rate under Clinton probably implies that we dealt with an unnatural expansion in labor supply back then -- e.g., the elderly reentering the market seeking the higher wages a tight supply would afford them, dropping back out once the contraction arrived and more normal levels returned.

But it's been very weak, nonetheless, and I suspect that's why wage growth has been so pathetic throughout this expansion.  I'd guess we've basically made up in the expansion what we lost on employment during the contraction over the last several years.  Even taking out the Clinton years and comparing Junior with Reagan, Carter, Daddy, etc, this has been pretty sad.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin