In Europe and North America, these amenities are provided by the sectors that the economist David Autor calls “wealth work,” a category with formal job titles that include Gift Wrapper, Fingernail Former, Mystery Shopper, and Barista.3 The combination of low wages and high living costs for many workers in hubs like New York, London, and Paris make these occupations unattractive to many native workers of all races, as well as more prosperous immigrants, who often move to suburbs or exurbs as soon as they can afford to escape. Urban service jobs are filled disproportionately by recent
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