The road to success in the new world economy requires more creative thinkers, innovators, and entrepreneurs than ever before. Why is the United States going in the wrong direction? Thanks to globalization and technological advancement, traditional middle-class jobs, such as manufacturing, have been disappearing quickly, offshored to other countries or replaced by machines. The U.S. economy is growing--companies are making record profits and investing, and new businesses are created every day. But that growth is creating jobs at the very top and the very bottom. The new economy favors highly skilled, highly educated workers, and their prosperity creates greater demands for low-paying service workers--but not for the kind of medium-skilled, middle-class jobs that formed the backbone of the workforce in the past. This is bad news for the United States, a country that has thrived on the strength of its middle class. This article discusses how the country can create the new middle class--the creative class.