**Pew defined class-income breakdown in 2020 like this, based on three-person households, adjusted for the cost of living in a metropolitan area:
lower-income households had incomes less than $48,500;
upper-income households had incomes greater than $145,500;
middle-income households fell into a range between those two numbers.**
$145,500 a year seems low to be considered upper income, that’s married couples that are both teachers, a fireman and nurse or an IT guy and manager of a Chipotle. Most couples I know are close to or higher than $145,500 a year.
That seems low to me as well. It wasn’t till my household income got over $200K until I started feeling good about where I was.
I live in a dirt poor rural area in Oklahoma. I would imagine that my household income is in the top 1 or 2% in my community. Keep in mind that is income and not wealth. There are plenty of income poor farmers that are sitting on vast amounts of land.
This is something that is really only accurate by city and state. Taking the average across all 50 states is tough to draw conclusions. I saw something recently that talked about middle-class by city. Let me see if I can find it…I think it was CNBC.