Geographic Inequality Is Widening
“Since the Great Recession, the economy has recovered on several key fronts—the stock market has rebounded, unemployment is down, the labor market has tightened, and employers are looking to fill jobs with talented workers. But for many millions of Americans, that recovery remains invisible: Their wages and productivity—two key measures of economic dynamism—have stagnated. Worse, both remain highly unequal and uneven across the nation, according to two new analyses. The first analysis by the economic data and modeling firm Emsi finds the pace of wage gains across metros has been slower than would be expected given the economic recovery. Nationally, real private sector wages grew by 0.8 percent annually between 2012 and 2016, which is anemic given an unemployment rate of 4.4 percent or so. More troublingly, wage gains have been concentrated in a very small number of places. Just two percent of metropolitan and micropolitan areas (19 of 934) saw their real private sector wages per job grow by an annual 3 percent between 2012 and 2016. Another 51 metros saw them grow by 2 percent. Meanwhile, real wages declined in roughly 15 percent of metros (139 of them) over the same period.”