Portside

The U.S. economy is booming. But the dramatic increase in jobs isn’t increasing wages and the growth in consumer spending has primarily been fueled by the bottom 60 percent of earners, who are exhausting their savings and piling up serious debt.

Half of all new jobs in Washington, DC will require at least a bachelor's degree, although only 12.3 percent of Black residents in 2014 had graduated from college. And, now that wealthier residents have moved back to cities, rent increases have left longtime residents unable to afford their homes.

Progressive revenue increases are key to meeting nation’s fiscal challenges. Please see original source for all Figures, Tables, graphs ad notes.

(Hint: It’s less about income and more about skin color.) This infographic is part of a special report. Banking on Justice: The Bankers Doing Civil Rights Work in the Mississippi Delta.

Much attention has been given in recent years to low-wage work in the fast-food industry, big-box retail, and other service sector industries in the U.S. The rise of low-wage business models in the service sector has often been contrasted to business models of the past, when blue collar jobs in the manufacturing industry supported a large middle class in the U.S. Recent research found that manufacturing production wages now rank in the bottom half of all jobs in the U.S.

A majority of Americans struggle daily to stay afloat on a sea of red ink, perpetually threatened by wave after wave of debt. This hasn't always been the case. The phenomenon can be traced back to 1978, when the US economy was sailing into dire straits.

Just as in the 1850s (with the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act), the Southern labor system (with low pay and no unions) is wending its way north.

Washington raised the minimum wage in 1998 linking it to inflation. In the 15 years that followed, the state's minimum wage climbed to $9.32 - highest in the country. Meanwhile job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington's restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years