More Americans Are Breaking into the Upper Middle Class

wsj.com

14 points·lxm··6 comments

I can’t read the article, but I hope their definition of upper middle class adjusts for the steep inflation in housing. If my family knew how much I made, approximately the top 1% of incomes, they’d think I live a fantastically luxurious lifestyle. In reality, I live in the same kind of 3 bed 2 bath house I grew up because houses are now 5x more expensive.

> I can’t read the article

https://archive.ph/2026.04.05-025428/https://www.wsj.com/eco...

"Upper middle class" for a family is $133k according to them.

Things look very rosy for our economy as long as you're using 1963 numbers as your poverty baseline and extrapolating from there.

$133k is upper middle class. It just doesn't feel like upper middle class if you're living in NYC or San Francisco.

It doesn't feel like it if you're living in MOST places. I bought my first house 6 months after graduating from college (2000). It cost me roughly 3x my salary at the time. I know what I pay new grads right now, and it's way more than I made back then. There's no way they can afford a house like that at 3x their salary. It's closer to 4-5x, and we are nowhere near as expensive in this area as NYC, SF, DC, etc.

133k for a family of 3 is effectively poverty wages in NYC or SF.

In less HCOL areas it is getting by, but possibly never owning a house.

Hardly the upper middle class lifestyle one imagines being lived by doctors, lawyers, etc in times past.

discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MiddleClassFinance/comments/1scs22h...

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