What is happening to the American middle class?

Jim Tankersley writes in the Washington Post,

Make no mistake: The American middle class is in trouble.

...It used to be that when the U.S. economy grew, workers up and down the economic ladder saw their incomes increase, too. But over the past 25 years, the economy has grown 83 percent, after adjusting for inflation — and the typical family’s income hasn’t budged. In that time, corporate profits doubled as a share of the economy. Workers today produce nearly twice as many goods and services per hour on the job as they did in 1989, but as a group, they get less of the nation’s economic pie. In 81 percent of America’s counties, the median income is lower today than it was 15 years ago.

...Even before the 2008 crisis, the 2000s were on track to be the weakest decade for job creation since the Labor Department started tracking the statistics. The great mystery is: What happened? Why did the economy stop boosting ordinary Americans in the way it once did?

...Jobs were slow to appear after the 1990 recession ended, even when growth sped up. The late-’90s tech bubble brought a shower of jobs and wealth, but when the bubble burst, all the gains were wiped out — except the ones for the wealthiest people in the country. The same was true for the housing bubble of the 2000s.

The first decade of the 21st century produced two recessions and two “jobless recoveries,” and when it was over, the vast majority of Americans found themselves no better off than they were a quarter-century ago. Median income kept falling for several years, even after the Great Recession ended.

Read much more here. There is a very cool map there, showing how many years ago median income peaked in each county in the US.