In colloquial speech, “the economy” is often described as a unitary thing. More than any other event in recent history, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed this as pure fallacy: the stock market quite literally soaring even as millions struggle with joblessness and financial insecurity.

As of earlier this month, some eighteen million Americans remained on the unemployment rolls, and according to new research, roughly half of households have lost income over the past year. It’s increasingly well understood that the economic outlook looks very different for the most affluent: average bonuses for Wall Street employees rose by 10 percent in the last year to $184,000 according to a particularly emblematic estimate just released by the New York State comptroller.

In many ways, however, COVID-19 has simply accelerated a basic trend underway for decades — namely growth for those at the top and stagnation or regression for the less well-off. A new report published by the Institute for Policy Studies makes this case with particular force. Assembled by the institute’s Sarah Anderson, the study examines data on Wall Street bonuses compiled since 1985 — noting that the total bonus pool for New York’s 182,100 Wall Street employees was a whopping $31.7 billion in 2020 alone: enough to compensate a million jobs paying $15 an hour for a full year.