The Times on the sham recovery: For months, Democrats have said that the long-delayed employment recovery was concentrated in low-wage jobs that paid far less than those that were lost. White House officials replied that the available data failed to settle the matter one way or the other. The data is still inconclusive. But the weakness in job creation and the apparent weakness in high-paying jobs may be opposite sides of a coin. Companies still seem cautious, relying on temporary workers and anxious about rising health care costs associated with full-time workers. Many economists say that over the long term, the most vulnerable positions are those at the low end of the wage scale that require fewer skills and are easily replicated. Even now, at a time when a disproportionate number of new jobs appear to be lower-paying ones, there has been growth in some high-income occupations like accounting, architecture and software. Yet the earnings gap between the highest-paid employees and the rest of the work force is still widening, as it has over most of the last 30 years. The trend is most striking in factories, which accounted for the bulk of job losses in the last three years and tended to pay above-average wages. In contrast to previous recoveries, when companies rehired a large proportion of laid-off workers, manufacturers have added only 91,000 jobs this year, having eliminated more than two million jobs in the previous three years.