It's not so much that the mining sector is in the fast lane and the rest is in the slow lane, it is more like mining is on the expressway and the rest is lost in the parking lot.
The company profits figures on Monday highlight the divergence.
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Gross operating profits rose by 18.9 per cent overall, but that rise included a 62.7 per cent surge in the mining sector and 3.0 per cent in other sectors, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed.
Of the $10.9 billion increase in profits in the quarter, the mining sector accounted for $9.6 billion and the rest contributed $1.3 billion.
In the past five years, the mining sector's profits have risen from 24.9 per cent of the total measured in the quarterly survey by the ABS, to 36.4 per cent.
It was a story echoed in the ABS's capital spending survey last Thursday.
The survey of capital spending plans for the 2010/11 year, conducted in July and August, showed mining firms had pencilled in investments worth $54.8 billion.
That was $17.9 billion or 48 per cent higher than the corresponding survey for 2009/10.
In comparison, other sectors' plans were up by $6.3 billion or 10 per cent, barely a third the rise flagged in the mining sector.
In part, this is the result of the mining sector's retreat in the face of the global financial crisis (GFC), but the rout has turned into a rally.
Elsewhere, the economy is still dug in and having trouble mounting a counterattack.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the housing sector, the archetype of domestically oriented industries.
And the latest news from the front is not good.
The Housing Industry Association's count of new home sales fell by seven per cent in July seasonally adjusted, after a six per cent fall in May and a five per cent fall in June.
As a result, the level of sales in July was at its lowest since December 2008, when the industry was reeling from the dysfunction in global financial markets.
So, it seems, the two-speed economy is back.
And with it will come the stresses and strains that came with it before the GFC hit - stresses and strains that could prove more problematic than before.
As mining booms, the rising interest rates, high exchange rate, and labour market and infrastructure bottlenecks associated with the two-speed economy will become persistent features of the economic landscape.
The divergence between the mining and non-mining sectors will not be a surprise to policymakers.
"The 'two-speed economy' debate of a few years ago was really only a preview of what we could see if the resources sector build-up goes ahead," Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) governor Glenn Stevens warned back in November last year.
His counterpart in Canberra, Treasury secretary Ken Henry, devoted part of a speech to the topic in the following month, and the budget papers discussed the "resources curse" at length in May this year.
For those not in policymaking circles, the commodities boom and the two-speed economy it creates will be evident mainly in the discrepancy between economic policy and the apparent state of the economy.
If the RBA raises interest rates in the coming few months, a distinct possibility given the boost to the economy from the mining sector, those working in the housing sector are likely to see the move as wanton overkill.
But the RBA cannot tailor its interest rate settings for the stragglers or the leaders in the economic race.
And that means some will shrug off the impost from higher rates, while others curse the central bank's seeming heartlessness.
