What started as a workingman’s holiday, Labor Day’s turned into an annual checkpoint for assessing the health of the American workforce. Wonkish assessments abound, as every policy analyst and economic assessor produces figures decrying, or applauding, the employment landscape.

Here’s what we’re told, in 2007:

Americans work fewer hours per week than 50 years ago (barely). We still work more hours per year, though, than our counterparts in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. South Koreans, however, trump our annual output by more than one-third.

Executives used to earn 24 times the salary of employees. Now, it’s more like 260 times, much more when “perks” are included. Average annual perks for a Fortune 500 CEO would take a minimum-wage worker 36 years to earn.

Yet poverty is down. The national median income for families has risen .07 percent. And American manufacturing jobs pay better than ever – an average of $68,000, a 4 percent increase over 2005.

Too bad there’s 3 million fewer of them.

What’s infuriating about all these numbers is that they never tell us what we know, only what’s been calculated. Work force health isn’t measured by figures alone, but also through worker temperament, which is dominated by tomorrow’s concerns, rather than today’s numbers.

Those concerns are growing trade deficits with developing nations. About inferior, sometimes dangerous, goods flooding our markets. And the growing disparity between executive and worker compensation, and the impending credit destruction that may put American dreams – like homeownership – out of reach.

These are pressing issues facing American workers this Labor Day.

No sterile formula or policy paper needs to tell us that.