For a good amount of Americans, things in an economic sense are getting better, however, for the richest tier, the situation is getting drastically better.

The median American household saw a solid increase in economic gains as of last year, rising 3.2 percent in 2016 to $59,039. This data is according to the latest Census.

Although wages and salaries seem to be shooting up, the gains in the two categories are not distributed across the board.

The average income of the top 5% rose up 5.5% to $375,088 while the poorest one-fifth of households income only went up 2.5% to $12,943.

These are obviously extreme ends of the spectrum, but the difference in income is sharp and only getting worse. During the year of 2015, the top 1% raked in a staggering 20% of all income, which is more than double the level it was at in the 1980s.

According to economists Elise Gould and Zane Mokhiber, in 2016 “unfortunately, the growth was also not as broadly shared as it was in 2015. Families in the top fifth of the income distribution grew faster than in 2015, while the bottom 80% of families saw slower growth.”

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Beginning during the Great Recession, the lowest 50% of individuals in terms of income saw their share of the money go from 20% to 12%. This was stated to be a “complete collapse” by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The economists further stated that “it’s only in the last two years that we have made real progress and we’ve just barely reached 2007 levels for the majority of families.”

The income gap in the country is startling, and needs to be addressed more frequently from the higher power at a governmental level. Until then, it remains an issue that continues to plague our country across the board.