Wage inequality has increased dramatically over the last 35 years. For most of the 1980s, inequality increased across the entire wage distribution. This means middle-wage earners pulled away from the bottom and top wage earners pulled away from the middle. Since the late 1980s, however, the increase in inequality has been almost entirely in the “upper tail” of the distribution, or put simply the top has pulled away from everyone else.

The figure below shows one measure of upper tail inequality, the “95/50 wage gap.” This is the ratio of the wages of high-wage earners (those at the 95^th percentile) to middle-wage earners (those at the 50^th percentile). In 1979, men and women had the same 95/50 wage gap; wages at the 95^th percentile were 2.2 times higher than the wages of the typical worker. However, inequality grew among both men and women over essentially the entire period since 1979, though in the 2000s, the rise in inequality was somewhat higher among men than women. By 2013, the 95^th percentile man earned 3.3 times as much as the 50^th percentile man and the 95^th percentile woman earned 3.0 times as much as the 50^th percentile woman.

High wage inequality is a key wedge between a successful economy–one with strong overall economic growth that translates into strong wage growth for low, middle, and high-wage earners–and an unsuccessful economy –one where the vast majority of workers do not get ahead (which, if there is extreme wage inequality, can happen even in the face of strong overall economic growth). The enormous increase in inequality among both men and women over the last 35 years is a testament to the fact that skewed wage growth has become a core economic challenge of our time.

Tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. ET, EPI will launch Raising America’s Pay, a new initiative focused on policy solutions to jumpstart the stagnant wages of American workers with the release of the new report Raising America’s Pay: Why It’s Our Central Economic Policy Challenge, which includes the figure above. The report argues that wage growth is the key to addressing income inequality, boosting middle class incomes, reducing poverty, and facilitating social mobility. For more information or to RSVP, email news@epi.org. You can also watch the event live and follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #RaisePay.