For the fourth straight day, the stock market hit an all-time high Friday. But let's not get too excited.

While the milestone is a welcome sign of recovery from the financial meltdown in 2008 and may make those of us with 401(k)s feel better, there are other measures that are more telling about the daily lives of most Americans.

Those numbers are not good.

Even with February's addition of 236,000 jobs, the national jobless rate is 7.7%. California's rate was 9.8% in December, tied with Nevada and better than only Rhode Island.

When you add in workers who want a full-time job but can only find part-time employment and those who have become so discouraged that they have stopped looking, that's more than 22 million Americans.

The most recent report says 46 million Americans were poor -- a poverty rate of 15% in 2011. As many as 1 in 5 children lived in a household below the official poverty line -- a paltry $23,000 for a family of four.

The number without health insurance was nearly 49 million, or 16% of the population.

The inflation-adjusted income for the average household was 8% lower in 2011 than in 2007, before the crash. The finances of most families haven't completely rebounded, and the gap between rich and poor has widened.

Attention, however, is focused on the Dow Jones industrial average, which has more than doubled since the trough in March 2009. Some "experts" are predicting again that the Dow will break 20,000, though it's also possible that this is another dangerous bubble.

A rising stock market is better than a plummeting one, particularly for the psychology of consumer confidence. Yet rather than reflecting improvement in the lives of most Americans, the market rally has much more to do with soaring corporate profits, relatively low stock prices and record-low interest rates that make other investments less attractive.

President Barack Obama has delivered soaring speeches about helping the middle class and restoring the American dream. "Our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it," he declared in his inaugural address. "We believe that America's prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class."

His wealthy friends on Wall Street may be happy, but he needs to remember that most people are not cashing in from the stock market surge.