During the 1980s, wage inequality increased dramatically and the American economy lost many high wage, low- to medium-skill jobs, which had provided middle class incomes to less skilled workers. Increasingly, less skilled workers seemed restricted to low wage jobs lacking union or other...

During the 1980s, wage inequality increased dramatically, and the economy lost many high-wage jobs that had provided middle-class incomes to less skilled workers, increasingly restricting these workers to low-wage jobs lacking union or other institutional protections. A number of scholars have...