You've raised an excellent point here. The United States has basically made a decision here about what our priorities are going to be, and your point is a perfect illustration.
In any modern society, there are a seemingly endless number of things that come into play when you talk about what we know as "the economy" -- things like GDP, the unemployment rate, the stock market, personal incomes, inflation, standard of living, trade balance, mortgage interest rates, interest rates on U.S. Treasury notes, currency exchange rates, etc.
Think of all these factors (as well as any others that you might want to consider) as an endless series of variables that somehow relate to each other but cannot all be controlled. It is almost always possible for a government to control any of these factors -- but it can only control one of them at a time with any real sense of certainty.
This country, if it wanted to, could actually maintain a system of full (and I mean 100%) employment for a long period of time -- but only if it were willing to pay a price in terms of other factors (such as a worthless currency and miserable standard of living) on our list.
Conversely, we could also institute a mandatory minimum wage of $500 per hour -- but only if we were willing to accept an unemployment rate of about 99%.
Or how about currency exchange? We could make the dollar as strong as we'd like -- but only if we can accept the inevitable trade deficit that would result.
We could even maintain the highest standard of living in the history of mankind (which is what we have right now) -- but we could never do this if we only consumed products or services that we made ourselves.
With all of these things in mind, I'll ask you a question: If you had a chance to control a single economic factor in the list I provided (or any other one), which one would it be?