Economists say one big reason for the widening divide is the steady loss of manufacturing jobs.
First up is the worship within the political and economic classes of manufacturing jobs.
FORBES: Book Review: Enrico Moretti's "The New Geography of Jobs"
With the substantial loss of manufacturing jobs comes the loss of a serious amount of service sector jobs.
FORBES: The Minnesota Shutdown - A Glimpse Into The Nation's Future And The GOP's True Intentions
As we experienced dramatic loss of manufacturing jobs, politicians reminded Americans that we are the great ideas country.
FORBES: How American Businesses Are Giving Away Ideas To China
Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs in America have been lost in the realms of textiles and furniture.
ENGADGET: Made in America: could your next phone be homegrown? Mobile
In the Rust Belt, the loss of manufacturing jobs has slowed economic growth and with it the housing market.
At 11.7% of the workforce, the region has the second highest level of manufacturing jobs of any English region.
BBC: Manufacturing the way to Yorkshire's economic recovery?
Americans reconciled themselves to the loss of manufacturing jobs with the thought that they would keep the smart jobs.
True, Hong Kong lost lots of manufacturing jobs during the 1980s and 1990s.
The vulnerability of manufacturing jobs (Bentley, the luxury-car firm, is based nearby) is a worry that never goes away.
There is no question that the U.S. has lost an enormous number of manufacturing jobs to lower wage countries.
Although Columbus is doing well, Ohio has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs and lags behind the rest of the nation.
But when it comes to high-end, high-skilled jobs, those are the kind of manufacturing jobs we have to go after.
That said, Immelt offered some encouraging signs the wage gap that drove thousands of manufacturing jobs to Asia is closing fast.
The number of manufacturing jobs has fallen by 20% over the past 30 years in the metropolitan region, and by 50% in the city itself.
The bottom line is that instead of complaining about offshoring manufacturing jobs, we should be focusing on keeping and creating the right kind of manufacturing jobs.
Near the English Midlands town of Leicester, Oliver Wessely's company is heavily reliant on the Poles who have poured into the area in search of manufacturing jobs.
There is no doubt that the U.S. has lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the last several decades and the recession only continues to accelerate this increase.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall number of jobs in the U.S. has been flat since 2000, and the number of manufacturing jobs is down.
FORBES: Services, Not Manufacturing, Will Revive The U.S. Workforce
Between 2000 and 2007--before the onset of the financial crisis--the nation's largest percentage losses of manufacturing jobs were concentrated in Big Three bastions like Detroit, Warren-Farmington Hills, Saginaw, Flint and Cleveland.
Kombucha Brooklyn now employs eight staff - but can these small start-ups ever replace the hundreds - thousands - of manufacturing jobs that have been lost in Brooklyn over the years?
Politicians, especially democrats, bemoan America's loss of manufacturing jobs.
It was the first instance that the figure had dipped below 12 million since 1946, and it capped off a 24-month slide of manufacturing jobs that began at the tail end of 2007.
ENGADGET: Made in America: could your next phone be homegrown? Mobile
And that includes a lot of manufacturing jobs.
WHITEHOUSE: Weekly Address: "We Can Out-Compete Any Other Nation"
And you combine it then with an entire new U.S. auto industry that is cleaner and smarter and has better designs and is making better products -- those are potentially thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of manufacturing jobs.
America is going through the same process of decline and denial that Britain went through in the 1950s and 1960s, the authors argue: rather than freeing people to move to more value-added activities, the loss of manufacturing jobs can lead to the loss of entire ecosystems of innovation.
ECONOMIST: Why America cannot see that it is losing traction
Combined with cuts in state-owned industry, this has eliminated 40% of the manufacturing jobs in the province of Naples alone.
The other day I wrote about whether there is a skills gap between the hundreds of thousands of open manufacturing jobs and the millions of unemployed job-seekers.
FORBES: Is There A Glut Of Technology Jobs For Young People?
The waning of the manufacturing jobs that used to be the mainstay of the working class has created a generation of young males, in particular, who don't know what to do with themselves.
Moretti notes that innovation-centric jobs have a multiplier effect: they create other jobs, and at triple the rate of standard manufacturing jobs.
应用推荐