In addition to education, geography has been a factor in who has benefited from the economic recovery. Economic growth has been highest in the largest cities, such as New York, where the population has surged by 1 million people in the last 12 years, Cohen said. “We’ve seen a skewing of economic success, not just by education but by where people live,” she commented.

The third factor creating the uneven recovery is that growth has been concentrated in a few industries and occupations. The hardest hit have been retail workers, whose hours have been reduced as result of the move to online shopping at websites like Amazon, Cohen said. The jobs that command the highest wages are in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math professions. STEM workers are earning an average of $100,000 annually, twice as much as the national average of $45,000 to $50,000 a year, Cohen said.

A person doesn’t have to be a technologist to earn more; if he or she works for a STEM company but is employed in another capacity, the salary will be higher than for a similar occupation in other fields, Cohen said. “But the sad fact is that just 7.2 percent of Americans work in [STEM] industries,” she added.

Policy makers need to think about all these areas – education, geography and industry – when coming up with ideas to improve the U.S. economy, Cohen said.

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