{"id":573485,"date":"2026-04-09T08:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T08:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/573485\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T08:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T08:20:16","slug":"how-dual-incomes-and-the-tech-boom-turned-the-upper-middle-class-into-americas-biggest-income-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/573485\/","title":{"rendered":"How dual incomes and the tech boom turned the upper middle class into America’s biggest income group"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ranks of Americans that can add guac to their burrito bowl guilt-free have swelled. The upper middle class has become the largest income group in the US, according to a recent\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, highlighted by the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n

The report contends that the lower rungs of the middle class shrank because more Americans got richer:<\/p>\n

In 2024, 31% of American families were upper middle class, compared with just 10% in 1979.<\/p>\n

The think tank\u2019s report defined the upper middle class as a family of three earning $133k to $400k in 2024 dollars\u2014five to 15 times the federal poverty line.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the share of American households living in or near poverty declined from almost 30% in 1979 to below 19% in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re comfortable\u2019 class<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal notes that upper middle class folks are often white-collar professionals in dual-income households, who have benefitted from women\u2019s advances in the workforce and rising wages in fields like software engineering. Many are boomers raking in sizable pension payments made possible by stock market gains.<\/p>\n

This group\u2019s shopping habits are behind the rise of bougie goods and services, like first-class plane tickets, which have been a major driver of US economic growth.<\/p>\n

But\u2026economic inequality has also grown, with families in higher tax brackets seeing greater income growth while the poorest 5% seeing their earnings decline.\u2014SK<\/p>\n

This report was originally published<\/a> by Morning Brew<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Fortune 500 Innovation Forum will convene Fortune 500 executives, U.S. policy officials, top founders, and thought leaders to help define what\u2019s next for the American economy, Nov. 16-17 in Detroit. Apply here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ranks of Americans that can add guac to their burrito bowl guilt-free have swelled. The upper middle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101,44676,3425,30606,8378],"class_list":{"0":"post-573485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-household-income","11":"tag-income","12":"tag-middle-class","13":"tag-morning-brew"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}