Resource Series: The Rise of Populism

Overview The poor quality of jobs in the United States is a slow-burning crisis that has been underway for many decades and has eroded many workers’ quality of life. Too many U.S. workers—especially but not exclusively workers without college degrees—are working in jobs with lower pay, lack of oppor…

Overview In the early 2000s, manufacturing-intensive communities in the United States entered a period of economic upheaval that would reshape their labor markets over the next two decades. China’s dramatic rise as the world’s leading exporter of manufactured goods, abetted by receipt of Permanent N…

Overview Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election set off an animated debate among Democrats over what went wrong with their policymaking, messaging, and campaigning. Specifically, Democrats puzzled over why the working class abandoned the historical party of workers in ever-lar…

Overview In wealthy nations around the world, the rise of the knowledge economy has increased political and economic divides that fuel right-wing populism. These divides generally have a strong geographic dimension, and the United States is no exception. Dense metro locales—advantaged in the knowled…

Overview Around the globe, people are increasingly dissatisfied with the state of democratic capitalism. In the United States and other rich democracies, economic policy has too often in recent decades produced rising economic inequality across individuals, as well as regions within countries, stagn…