Giving Compass' Take:

• Brookings discusses two new research papers about the U.S. economy, highlighting stark disparities that the new Congress will need to confront.

• What role will philanthropy play in addressing wages and housing affordability? How might funders work with policymakers to develop nonpartisan solutions?

• Here's more on how to fuel growth in a rapidly changing digital economy.

As Democrats take back control of the House, they will confront a 21st-century economic reality that consists of two Americas: one with jobs, one without. Two recent papers from my colleagues here at Brookings explore this new economic reality and show how difficult it will be to formulate policy around it.

The first paper, by Clara Hendrickson, Mark Muro, William A. Galston is called “Countering the geography of discontent: Strategies for Left-Behind Places.” It opens with a killer graph that shows employment by community size and type. In 2008, at the start of the great recession, employment rates did not vary by the size of the community. During the recession, of course, employment rates everywhere went down. But starting in 2013, when the recovery picked up enough to start creating jobs, something new and different happened. “Big, techy metros like San Francisco, Boston and New York with populations over 1 million have flourished, accounting for 72% of the nation’s employment growth since the financial crisis.”

Read the full article about the challenges of left-behind places by Elaine Kamarck at Brookings