Most Americans think they're middle class. The math doesn't add up. And that confusion isn't an accident.
Three years ago, I moved to Singapore.
If you'd asked me why at the time, I would have given you the sensible answers: business opportunities, tax efficiency, proximity to emerging markets. All true. But there was another reason I didn't say out loud, maybe didn't even fully admit to myself. I wanted to level up. I wanted to cross some invisible threshold from "doing well" to "wealthy." I wanted, though I wouldn't have put it this way, to change classes.
I grew up in Melbourne, Australia. Looking back, we were solidly middle class. The path forward seemed clear: work hard, get educated, build something. I did all of that. I left home, studied economics and international relations, spent years as a management consultant, then started building media companies. I moved between cities and continents — London, New York, Los Angeles, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and eventually Singapore. And somewhere along the way, without ever naming what I was doing, I began climbing.
I'm telling you this because I've come to realize something uncomfortable. Not just about myself, but about how most of us think about class. Which is to say: we don't. Not clearly. Not honestly. And that confusion serves a purpose.
Here's a number that should stop you: according to a Northwestern Mutual survey, roughly 70 percent of Americans identify as "middle class." Households earning $30,000 call themselves middle class. So do households earning $300,000. The term has become so stretched, so evacuated of meaning, that it now describes nearly everyone and therefore no one.
Meanwhile, Pew Research Center data shows that only 51 percent of Americans actually qualify as middle-income by any objective measure. In 1971, that figure was 61 percent. The middle class hasn't just been shrinking; it's been hollowing out while most people still believe they're in it.
This isn't just semantic sloppiness. It's a kind of collective hallucination, one that protects certain interests very effectively. When everyone believes they're in the same boat, there's no reason to ask who's steering it.
The structure no one talks about
Before we go further, let's establish some clarity. Because without a shared map, we can't have a real conversation.
Sociologists who study class seriously have developed taxonomies far more precise than the vague "upper/middle/lower" we learned in school. The most widely used is the Gilbert-Kahl model, developed by sociologists Dennis Gilbert and Joseph Kahl, which identifies six distinct classes in American society. Their framework, outlined in Gilbert's book The American Class Structure, draws on Max Weber's insight that class isn't just about money. It's about education, occupation, and what Weber called "life chances": the doors that open or stay closed based on where you start.
At the top sits the capitalist class: the super-rich whose income comes primarily from investments and ownership rather than wages. They comprise roughly one percent of the population. Their net worth runs into the tens of millions or higher. They don't navigate institutions; they fund them, sit on their boards, set their agendas.
The upper-middle class is perhaps the most misunderstood tier. These are senior professionals, executives, successful business owners: people with graduate degrees, household incomes between $150,000 and $350,000, and significant social capital. They often insist they're "comfortable but not wealthy" while their children attend schools that cost more annually than the median American earns. Gilbert and other researchers place this group at about 14 percent of the population.
I think about this tier a lot. Because if I'm honest about where I fit now, this is probably it. Maybe touching the edge of the affluent tier above. I run a media company. I recently moved to Sentosa Cove, which, if you're unfamiliar, is Singapore's enclave of gated properties where neighbors arrive by yacht. Writing that sentence makes me uncomfortable. That discomfort is worth examining.
The lower-middle class, roughly a quarter of the population, includes administrative workers, teachers, retail managers, skilled tradespeople. Incomes typically range from $50,000 to $80,000. They might own modest homes and have small emergency funds, but they remain vulnerable. One bad quarter, one medical emergency, and the slide begins.
The working class, another 30 percent, trades time for hourly wages in service jobs, retail, manual labor. According to Brookings Institution research, many in this tier live paycheck to paycheck, with limited savings and high vulnerability to economic shocks. For them, employment is a necessity rather than an identity.
Below that are the working poor and the underclass: those in persistent economic crisis, often multi-generational, disconnected from the formal ladders the rest of us climb. Together they make up roughly a quarter of the population, though their presence in our collective consciousness is minimal. We've built entire systems to ensure we don't have to see them.
What the numbers hide
Here's what took me years to understand: income is a poor indicator of class. The real markers are subtler, and once you see them, you can't unsee them.
Time autonomy. How much control do you have over your hours? Can you leave work for a personal matter without asking permission, without anxiety, without consequence? The working class punches clocks. The middle class negotiates flexibility. The upper-middle class sets its own schedule. And the wealthy? Their time isn't purchased by anyone.
Security of income source. This is the threshold that separates the professional class from actual wealth. Salary is middle class, regardless of the number. Even a large salary. What separates classes isn't the size of the paycheck but whether you need the paycheck at all. Dividends, rental income, business profits that arrive whether you work or not: that's the dividing line. The wealthy don't trade time for money. Their money generates money while they sleep.
Your relationship to institutions. The working class approaches institutions with anxiety. Banks, hospitals, government agencies, schools: will I be approved? Will I be helped? Will they make this difficult? The middle class approaches them with competence: I know how to fill out these forms. The upper-middle class approaches them with expectation: of course I'll be accommodated. And the elite? They run the institutions. They sit on the boards. They make the calls that determine how everyone else is treated.
Who takes your call. Not who you know; that's too vague. Specifically: if you needed a favor, a recommendation, an opportunity, a loan, an introduction to power, who would pick up the phone? Social capital is invisible until you need it. Then it's everything.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu spent his career mapping these invisible advantages. He called them "cultural capital" and "social capital," and he argued they matter as much as economic capital in determining life outcomes. The way you speak, the references you catch, the ease with which you navigate elite spaces: these aren't incidental. They're inherited advantages that compound over generations, often invisible to those who possess them.
