In this paper, James K. Galbraith and Travis Hale survey the evolution of between-sector wage inequality in the United States from 1969 – 2006. They show that between-sector variations dominate between-state variations in determining the evolution of inequality. The high importance of between-sector variations in driving overall U.S. pay inequality raises important questions about the standard invocation of education and training as a remedy for inequality, since the choice of specialization has become a speculative decision, whose income prospects depend heavily on the ebb and flow of sectoral economic fortunes.