Justin Fox, Columnist

Why Some Cities Get All the Good Jobs

But not everyone wants to live in a cluster of innovation.

Thriving.

Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Over the past few decades, the U.S. job market has been pulling apart. Lots of new high- and low-wage jobs have been created, while middle-wage ones have become scarcer. Much of this divergence has been along geographical lines. I’ll let economist Enrico Moretti, of the University of California at Berkeley, explain:

That’s from Moretti’s 2012 book, “The New Geography of Jobs,” which I’ve been reading this week. The book explains a lot about our current economic situation, and perhaps something about today's politics as well. Wonder why voters are so resentful of elites and the establishment? Maybe it’s because that elite establishment has become increasingly concentrated in a few prospering metropolitan areas while much of the rest of the country struggles.