In what may be a related trend, geographic mobility across counties and states has decreased.3 Longer-term patterns in the types of jobs being created have also contributed to a widening gap in wages and income between the richest and poorest Americans.
Adjusting for inflation, earnings for a worker in the middle of the wage distribution have risen about 10 percent since 1980, while earnings for a highly paid worker at the 90th percentile of the wage distribution have risen more than 30 percent during the same period.