Once upon a time in America, shopping malls were the royalty of retail locations, and the kings and queens of that select group of retail locations were multistory malls.

While not so common now, back in the 1980s, children could be found riding up and down escalators finding joy in being taken from one floor to another without any effort of their own.

In some ways, our current economy is very much like those mall escalators, moving certain people up to higher levels and other people down to lower levels, all with no (or next to no) effort on their part other than being on the escalator for the ride.

Call it an escalator economy, or use Fed chair Jerome Powell's term, a "bifurcated economy." Specifically, Powell said:

"If you listen to the earnings calls or the reports of big, public, consumer-facing companies, many of them are saying that there's a bifurcated economy there and that consumers at the lower end are struggling and buying less and shifting to lower cost products. But that at the top, people are spending at the higher income and wealth."

Many analysts call it a K-shaped economy – it's all the same thing. 

One where the lower end are struggling to make ends meet. While people at the top can keep spending.

In other words, an economy that is moving some people towards the top of the pile and everybody else towards the bottom.

What is a "K-shaped" economy?

A K-shaped economy is an economy in which wealth inequality (to use the buzz word) is growing. Put simply, the financially better off (both individuals and corporations) are getting richer while average Americans and mom-and-pop businesses are finding it even more difficult to make ends meet. 

You've no doubt felt it at the grocery store… or when going out for a cheap meal. 

Take Chipotle, for example. Their core business is focused on what CNN calls "Young and lower-income consumers." Specifically, households bringing in less than $100,000 per year.