Classless society indeed

Remember how America was always portrayed as a classless society? How proud we were that we didn't stratify ourselves by class the way those silly Europeans did?

Well, how does that old concept fit with this, from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis?

Residential neighborhoods throughout the nation's metropolitan areas have become increasingly divided into high-
and low-unemployment sections, and an analysis by an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests that people may be "sorting" themselves by both income and education.
The analysis was conducted by Christopher H. Wheeler, writing in the March/April issue of Review, the Reserve Bank's bimonthly journal of economic and business issues.
...
The rate of unemployment is one of the most basic indicators used to gauge the economy's health. As the economy fluctuates between periods of expansion and recession, corresponding changes in the rate of unemployment are observed.
Between 1980 and 2000, the aggregate national unemployment rate fell from 6.3 percent to 3.9 percent, suggesting that workers in the United States faced better unemployment prospects in 2000 than in 1980.
"Yet, underlying these figures," said Wheeler, "is a trend that is not widely known: Unemployed workers became increasingly concentrated in certain neighborhoods within the nation's metropolitan areas. That is, neighborhoods in the United States became increasingly polarized into two groups: those with high rates of unemployment and those with low rates."

Tell me that this doesn't sound like a damn good beginning toward the stratification of America by class.