How difficult is it to be upwardly economically mobile where you live?

With the proper experience and training, it is extremely easy to find work that has promotion/growth potential. For a person with little or no experience, it is very difficult.

I stumbled into a temp job in an office when I was fresh out of high school.

Magically, that became my profession, as its the only thing I’ve ever had paid experience in. I hate the work. There is no room for advancement, the pay sucks, and there is no job security.

I’m currently unemployed because i’ve wasted the last year working my ass off for a company that knew it was shutting down before they hired me.

Hard to say. There are a lot of very rich people here, and very poor people. Here is a map of our median income by metro stop; it ranges from around $30k to around $150k.

The biggest employer here is the federal government, and most of the professionals I’ve met work for the government or something related, like federal contractors. Most of the people who have the best jobs seem to have gone a standard route- high school, college, internships, networking, career.

There’s also the city government, which provides comfortable jobs for many of the locals, creating a small middle class. And there are many low-paying service industry jobs here.

I’ve seen upward mobility across generations, where the parents didn’t go to college but the children did. But most of the college-educated people I know have parents who went to college.

I think D.C. is probably more divided than most places.

Similar to @Haleth‘s answer it partly matters what generation American you are here. The generation that immigrates here tend to struggle a little, the next generation is more likely to have more education and be upwardly mobile, but certainly there is a percentage of immigrants that do extremly well through owning their own business, or they have college degrees themselves. It was easier to be upwardly mobile in years past as the country was growing and growing economically no matter how long your family had been here. New industries, tech industries, provided great opportunities for those coming of age in the 90’s. Also, in the late 70’s and 80’s unions had really pushed the envelope and factory workers made a really good income, which now has actually gone down. So, factory workers and other union jobs have not kept up with inflation, not even close.

I think it definitely is tougher right now to be upwardly mobile from your parents than 30–50 years ago, but definitely you can still work your way up in the work force and make a career and good money. No matter what it has always taken hard work and some strategy to steadily increase your income.