By Meg Richards
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - When Wall Street saw another set of upbeat employment numbers this past week, it barely blinked.

The surprising lack of response could be evidence of the market's improving health: Investors, having learned a tough lesson the past three years, are approaching stocks with more rationality and emotional maturity than in the past.

"The market is behaving very well because investors are getting what they expected," said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo in Minneapolis.

Even Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who famously warned of "irrational exuberance" during the stock market's boom years of the late 1990s, seems pleased with the pace of the economic recovery. He struck an optimistic tone in remarks to securities industry officials Thursday, and even gave stocks a late-day boost by saying the odds increasingly favor the creation of new jobs.

A much-awaited government report bore him out Friday. Payrolls grew by 126,000 last month according to the Labor Department, far more than the 50,000 new jobs economists predicted. The job market has been the weakest element in a robust recovery.

The employment numbers, Greenspan's comments, an industry report on manufacturing and factory order data and solid earning released during the week all reinforce the idea that the economy is strengthening. But high stock prices have caused investors to take a step back, Sohn said.