NEW YORK, USA – Europe appears on the brink of another recession. Islamic militants have seized Iraqi territory. Russian troops have massed on the Ukraine border, and the resulting sanctions are disrupting trade. An Ebola outbreak in Africa and Israel’s war in Gaza are contributing to the gloom.

It’s been a grim summer in much of the world. Yet investors in the United States have largely shrugged it off – so far at least.

A big reason is that five years after the Great Recession officially ended, the US economy is showing a strength and durability that other major nations can only envy. Thanks in part to the Federal Reserve’s ultra-low interest rates, employers have ramped up hiring, factories have boosted production and businesses have been making money.

All of this has cushioned the US economy from the economic damage abroad. And investors have responded by keeping US stocks near all-time highs. Not even reports Friday of a Ukrainian attack on Russian military vehicles unnerved investors for long, with blue chip stocks regaining nearly all their midday losses by the close.

“We’re in a much better place psychologically,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “And it’s allowing us to weather the geopolitical threats much more gracefully.”

Still, the global turmoil comes at a delicate time.

China, the world’s second-biggest economy, is struggling to contain the fallout from a runaway lending and investment boom that’s powered its growth since before the 2008 financial crisis. The economies of Japan and Germany, the world’s third- and fourth-largest, shrank in the spring. So did Italy’s.

It might not take much – an oil-price spike, a prolonged recession in Europe, a plunge in business or consumer confidence – to derail the global economy.

Here’s a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the US economy and others, and why the calm in markets may or may not last:

Hiring in the United States has surged in the first seven months of this year.

Monthly job gains are averaging a solid and steady 230,000, based on government figures. That’s roughly an average of 35,000 more jobs each month compared with last year.

Fewer people are applying for unemployment benefits. And fewer new hires are working as temps. Both trends suggest stronger job security.

Economists say the cumulative effect of all those additional pay checks should propel growth and help insulate the US economy from trouble abroad.

Though low-paying industries account for much of the hiring, many economists foresee more jobs coming from higher-wage industries such as construction, engineering and consulting.

Zandi expects monthly job growth to accelerate to an average of 275,000 sometime next year.

Earnings at companies in the Standard and Poor’s 500 index are on track to jump 10 per cent in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to S&P Capital IQ, a research firm. That would be the biggest quarterly gain in nearly three years.

That news has helped the S&P 500 index climb nearly six per cent this year, extending a bull market into its sixth year. The gains have been remarkably steady, too. The stock market hasn’t suffered a “correction” – a drop of 10 per cent – in nearly three years, twice as long as is typical.

Still, some markets outside the US are falling.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 is down six per cent this year. Germany’s DAX has lost nearly five per cent, and France’s CAC 40 is down three per cent.

Though the US economy has managed so far to withstand the economic and geopolitical turmoil abroad, it isn’t immune to it.

And the bad news kept coming this past week.

The 18-country Eurozone, a key region that emerged from recession last year and accounts for nearly a fifth of global output, failed to grow at all in the second quarter of the year. “The European recovery is faltering,” says Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank.

Escalating tension between the West and Russia isn’t helping. Exports from the eurozone to Russia account for less than 1 percent of the region’s economic output. But Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is vulnerable. It gets nearly all its natural gas from Russia. The German economy contracted 0.2 per cent in the second quarter compared with the previous quarter. And business confidence in Germany is plummeting.

Retail sales stalled in the United States last month. Wage growth has failed to surpass inflation, leaving many consumers unwilling or unable to spend more. Sales at auto dealers and department stores fell in July.

Wal-Mart this week cut its profit outlook. Macy’s trimmed its sales forecast.

“Consumers are finding they can live without a lot of the stuff they used to buy automatically,” says Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, in a research note. “Right now, people are just not parting with their hard-earned funds.”