The Recovery Squeezes the Middle Class

In an election that's supposed to be all about reviving the economy and creating opportunities for the still-lagging middle class, the leading presidential candidates have been short on specifics. Job growth since the end of the recession has been clustered in high-skill fields inaccessible to workers without advanced degrees or in low-paying industries, economists found. It's the middle-income jobs that have been slow to return. The Great Recession accelerated a decades-long shift in the economy away from the kind of moderate-skill jobs that have long supported a broad US middle class. Less obvious in the past, this downward movement is now plainly visible in the lopsided recovery.