All cups are half empty in the world of Bob Herbert

Today's New York Times editorial from Bob Herbert offers some first-class hand-wringing over the fact that in April the economy produced 274,000 jobs. For Herbert, nothing is good news that occurs under W - but he has to try pretty hard to find the lead lining in this cloud:

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Here are the best parts:

College graduates today are doing better in real economic terms than college graduates in the 1970's. But everyone else is doing less well. "If you look at families headed by someone without a college degree," said Professor Sum, "their income last year in real terms was below that of a comparable family in 1973. For dropouts it's like 25 percent below where it was. And for high school grads, about 15 to 20 percent below.

and -

In Illinois, fewer than one in every three teenage high school dropouts are working.

This is bad thing why? Doesn't it prove that the economy is producing the kind of real, career-level jobs that sustain growth as opposed to the low-level, low skill jobs that people like Herbert are constantly warning us are taking over in the US? Why in the world would we want to have better job opportunities for high school dropouts???