The Rich Are Getting Richer in the U.S. Recovery

The richest U.S. neighborhoods are getting richer when it comes to benefiting from economic gains. More than half of the national rise in U.S. employment from 2011 to 2015 occurred in the nation’s most prosperous postal codes with the “strongest starting fundamentals,” according to a study released Monday by the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington researcher. The most distressed parts of the country, meanwhile, saw a 0.1 percent decline in jobs, highlighting the uneven nature of the economic recovery along geographic lines.

The report ranked local economies based on factors such as the share of prime-age adults out of work or lacking a high school diploma, along with local poverty and housing vacancy rates, and levels of educational attainment. The higher the score, ranging from zero to 100, the more distressed the given area.