This chart, using data from a recent analysis by Jaison Abel and Richard Deitz of the New York Fed, captures several dynamics that have remade the U.S. economy since 1980. Thriving and stagnant places are pulling apart from each other. And within the most prosperous regions, inequality is widening to new extremes. That this inequality now so clearly correlates with city size — the largest metros are the most unequal — also shows how changes in the economy are both rewarding and rattling what we have come to think of as “superstar cities.”

In these places, inequality and economic growth now go hand in hand.

Back in 1980, Binghamton’s wage inequality made the region among the most unequal in the country, according to the Fed analysis. It ranked 20th of the 195 metros shown here as measured by comparing the wages of workers at the 90th percentile with those at the 10th percentile of the local wage distribution, a measure that captures the breadth of disparities in the local economy without focusing solely on the very top. In 1980, New York City was slightly less unequal, ranking 44th by this measure.

Forty years ago, none of the country’s 10 largest metros were among the 20 most unequal. By 2015, San Francisco, New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington had jumped onto that list, pulled there by the skyrocketing wages of high-skilled workers. Binghamton over the same period had become one of the least unequal metros, in part because many I.B.M. executives and well-paid manufacturing workers had vanished from its economy.

In effect, something we often think of as undesirable (high inequality) has been a signal of something positive in big cities (a strong economy). And in Binghamton, relatively low inequality has been a signal of a weak economy. (The Fairfield-Bridgeport, Conn., metro stands out in either era because the deep poverty of its urban core is surrounded by particularly rich suburbs.)

These patterns are hard to reconcile with appeals today for reducing inequality, both within big cities and across the country. What are Americans supposed to make of the fact that more high-paying jobs by definition widen inequality? Should New Yorkers be O.K. with growing inequality in New York if it’s driven by rising wages for high-skilled workers, and not falling wages for low-skilled ones?