Here's What It Takes To Be Middle Class

What does it take to be middle class? Around $82,000 a year household incomes in San Francisco, $74,000 in Seattle and $60,000 in Washington, DC, a new study says, but only $24,000 in Cleveland.

Researchers from SmartAsset, the consumer finance website, tabulated the low and upper middle class incomes in 100 major cities and every state.

The analysis adopts a Pew Research Center definition of the middle class: Americans whose income is between two-thirds and twice the median household income. (Pew also offers a nifty “Are you middle class in America?” income calculator.)

By applying the Pew multiplier to city and state medians, the SmartAsset report shows an income distribution that defines what it means to be middle class in different parts of the United States.

“America’s middle class has many different faces,” said Jaclyn DeJohn, editor-in-chief of economic analysis at SmartAsset. “You can make $24,000 in Cleveland or $310,000 in Fremont and still be considered middle class.”

Not surprisingly, median incomes are higher in some affluent West Coast cities and well-heeled mega-suburbs.

Fremont, California, a city of 230,000 in Silicon Valley, has the wealthiest middle class of any major jurisdiction in America. The median household income is $155,968, meaning that middle-class income ranges from $104,499 to $311,936.

Cleveland is home to the country’s least affluent middle class, with incomes ranging from $23,827 to $71,124. A Cleveland family earning $100,000 would feel comparatively wealthy.

The analysis could be of interest to anyone living in a big city or thinking about moving, the SmartAsset researchers said, as it provides a measure of how far one’s salary could go and how relatively wealthy one might feel.

“The idea here was to give people a realistic metric to compare themselves to,” DeJohn said. “For every city in America, there is a different financial reality.”

The new report doesn’t attempt to measure the size and shape of America’s entire middle class. According to a 2022 Pew analysis, the proportion of American adults who make up the middle class has shrunk from 61 percent in 1971 to 50 percent in 2021. We are a nation with increasing income inequality.

Using the same formula used in the SmartAsset report, Pew defines the middle class as those with incomes between two-thirds and twice the national median income. That equates to a national salary range of about $52,000 to $156,000 in 2020 for a three-person household.

According to the census, the country’s median household income in 2021 was $70,784.

The SmartAsset report identified six cities where this total would not count as middle class: Fremont, mentioned above; San Jose, California, with a minimum middle-class income of $84,673; Arlington, the DC suburb, with a mid-range threshold of $84,186; San Francisco for $81,623; Seattle, at $74,223; and Irvine in Orange County, California for $70,869.

Some of the country’s largest cities are among the lowest in median income, meaning it doesn’t take a lot of money to qualify as middle class.

In Cincinnati, by Pew’s definition, a household earning $28,631 a year would be considered middle class. In Milwaukee, the middle class starts at $31,247 per year. The middle-class income threshold is $32,689 in Miami, $33,477 in St. Louis, $35,442 in Philadelphia, $36,617 in Baltimore, and $37,184 in Houston.

Los Angeles ranks 37th among major cities for middle-class income, ranging from $47,149 to $140,744.

New York ranks 45th with a middle-class income ranging from $45,558 to $135,994. (These numbers are for the city as a whole, not just Manhattan.)

Trump Presents Personal Financial Report, Offers Insight into Post-Presidency Earnings What Crisis? The profits of the big banks are increasing despite banking problems

At the state level, the report found that middle-class incomes in the Northeast are about 20 percent higher than in the South.

In Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington, DC, a household would have to earn more than $60,000 to be classified as middle class.

Mississippi has the lowest middle-class salary threshold at $32,640, followed by West Virginia ($34,336), Louisiana ($34,898), and Arkansas ($35,194).