puts in 11.5 more working hours per week than their predecessors did 40 years ago. According to Brookings, the average middle-class married couple in the U.S. While employees in other high-income countries like France or Germany are working fewer hours than they were in the '70s, the opposite is true for Americans. And while incomes have grown at a faster clip for those with bachelor's degrees, it's not buying them a better quality of life: According to Marketplace, the average American's productivity has grown three times more than pay since the 1970s.Ī lack of personal time, which Brookings has dubbed the “middle class time squeeze,” is another source of strain. Sluggish wage growth certainly isn’t the result of Americans being under-credentialed: Pew’s research, published in April 2022, shows the share of people with college degrees has tripled in the last five decades. Elisabeth Jacobs, a deputy director at the research nonprofit Urban Institute, said in a 2021 Brookings panel that if middle incomes had grown at the same pace as the top 20% of earners over the past 50 years, a solidly middle-class family would average around $139,000 annually (post-tax). Those gains, however, pale in comparison to the 69% growth enjoyed by the wealthiest households. workforce is 50% higher now ($90,131) than it was in 1971 ($59,934), primarily thanks to women’s increased participation in the workforce, says Sawhill, who's a co-author of the Brookings report "A New Contract with the Middle Class." Measured in 2020 dollars, the median salary of the U.S. On paper, middle-class household income has increased considerably in the last 50 years. Census Bureau.Hawaii Alaska Florida South Carolina Georgia Alabama North Carolina Tennessee RI Rhode Island CT Connecticut MA Massachusetts Maine NH New Hampshire VT Vermont New York NJ New Jersey DE Delaware MD Maryland West Virginia Ohio Michigan Arizona Nevada Utah Colorado New Mexico South Dakota Iowa Indiana Illinois Minnesota Wisconsin Missouri Louisiana Virginia DC Washington DC Idaho California North Dakota Washington Oregon Montana Wyoming Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Pennsylvania Kentucky Mississippi Arkansas Texas Open an Account Today Defining the modern middle class " The American Middle Class is Losing Ground," Pages 4 - 5. " Utopian Thinking: The Easy Way to Eradicate Poverty." " The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy." " Why the 20%, and Not the 1% Are the Real Problem." " The Growing Size and Incomes of the Upper Middle Class,". “ Highest Median Household Income on Record?” " How much money you have to earn to be in the top 1%." “ Income Inequality in the United States.”ĬNBC. “ America’s Wealth Gap Between Middle-Income and Upper-Income Families Is Widest on Record.”Įconomic Policy Institute. " Most Americans Aren’t Middle Class Anymore." Census Bureau, " The Nation's Older Population Is Still Growing, Census Bureau Reports."įiveThirtyEight. " The American Middle Class is Losing Ground,". “ How the American middle class has changed in the past five decades.” The lives of families making the median income look very different, given the vastly different cost-of-living levels across the U.S. The problem is that your money probably does not buy you the same kind of life when you live in a big coastal city versus a rural setting in the middle of the country. You can break down your class status first by state, metropolitan area, income before taxes, and members of the household, then by education level, age, race, and marital status. If you want to know exactly how you fit into the income class matrix, the Pew Research Center has a recently updated income calculator. Easy, right? Just take your household income and see where you fit, given these numbers. But, as a quick calculation, those making less than $43,350 make up the lower-income bracket, while those making more than $130,000 make up the upper-income bracket. This is a rough estimate and doesn't account for family size or location. This Pew classification means that the category of middle income is made up of people making somewhere between $43,350 and $130,000. Pew defines the middle class as those earning from two-thirds to double the median household income. Census Bureau shows that the 2021 median household income was the highest on record at just around $65,000.
So, the obvious follow-up question is: Where does that leave me? Into which class do I fall?
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