There's widespread agreement at this point that wage inequality has been growing at a remarkable pace since the 1970s. The data on that much are clear:
But what's causing this is a matter of dispute. One explanation, initiated by Harvard's Lawrence Katz and Claudia Goldin and elaborated on by MIT's David Autor and Daron Acemoglu, is that technological innovations are making easily automated jobs less common. But these jobs tend to be low to medium-skill, high-paying occupations, such as working on a factory assembly line. The result is a growth in occupations that are hard to automate, which tend to either be very menial and low-paying (such as janitorial labor) or high-paying but requiring considerable skills (like computer programming). So as the middle of the distribution gets carved out, the low and top ends grow.
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