What Salary Do You Need to Be Middle Class Where You Live?
Are you middle class for your city and family size?
What Salary Is Middle Class?
Enter your household income, size, and city to see which income tier you fall in using Pew Research methodology and BEA Regional Price Parity data. Updates live.
Your Income & Location
Used to equivalize income to a 3-person baseline
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The definition of middle class sounds simple but depends almost entirely on where you live and how many people you support. Pew Research defines middle class as households earning 67-200% of the national median household income — roughly $57,000-$169,800 for a three-person household in 2023. Those national figures shift dramatically when adjusted for local cost of living. A $90,000 salary is solidly upper-middle class in Memphis and barely clears the local middle-class floor in San Francisco. A $70,000 salary for a single person looks very different from a family of four on the same income. This calculator applies the Pew Research methodology to your specific metro area, adjusting for local cost of living using Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity (RPP) data and scaling all thresholds to your actual household size. The output tells you which of the five class tiers your household falls into — lower, lower-middle, middle, upper-middle, or upper class — along with the precise income you would need to cross into the next tier. Understanding your class position drives meaningful decisions about housing budgets, savings targets, and whether a job offer in a new city represents a genuine raise or just a higher number. Updated 2026-03-06 · Samir Messaoudi.
- →You want to know if your current income qualifies as middle class in your specific city
- →You received a job offer in a new city and want to compare your class tier across locations
- →You want to know exactly how much more income it would take to reach the next class tier
- →You are planning a relocation and want to see how purchasing power changes by metro area
- →You want to benchmark your household income against national and local percentiles
- →Your household size has changed and you want to recalculate the thresholds that apply to you
Jennifer, 34, single, earns $72,000 in Austin, TX. Austin's Regional Price Parity index is 108 — 8% above the national average. Adjusted local middle-class floor for one person: approximately $38,700. Local ceiling: approximately $115,500. Jennifer sits solidly in the middle class at 101% of the local adjusted median. To reach upper-middle class in Austin she needs approximately $96,400. In Memphis (RPP 86), the same $72,000 would place her at 120% of local median — deep in the middle tier.
- ✕Using the national middle-class range without adjusting for local cost of living
- ✕Comparing individual income to household thresholds without adjusting for household size
- ✕Treating middle class as a single homogeneous band — lower-middle and upper-middle have very different financial realities
- ✕Ignoring state and local taxes when comparing salaries across states
- ✕Not re-running the calculation when household size changes
How is the middle class income range calculated?
The Pew Research Center defines middle class as households earning 67-200% of the national median household income, adjusted for household size and local cost of living. For 2023, the national median is approximately $84,900. Income is equivalised to a three-person baseline using the square root of household size, then the range is multiplied by each metro's Regional Price Parity (RPP) index from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
What are the five class tiers?
Lower class: below 67% of adjusted median. Lower-middle: 67-100%. Middle class: 100-167%. Upper-middle: 167-200%. Upper class: above 200%. Each tier boundary shifts with your city's RPP and your household size — a single person needs roughly half the income of a family of four to hit the same tier.
Why does location affect the middle-class threshold so much?
The cost of the same standard of living varies by up to 50% between the most and least expensive US metro areas. Housing, childcare, healthcare, and transportation drive most of the variation. The BEA RPP index captures this — San Francisco and NYC have RPPs of 133-135, while much of the Midwest and South sits at 84-96. A salary must be RPP-adjusted for the class tier comparison to be meaningful.
Does household size change the thresholds a lot?
Yes. The equivalisation formula scales thresholds using the square root of household size relative to a three-person reference. A single person hits the middle-class floor at roughly 58% of the three-person threshold. A family of five hits it at about 129%. Two people each earning $50,000 may rank in a higher tier than one person earning $100,000 alone, because household costs are shared.
Is the middle class shrinking?
Yes, according to Pew Research. The share of US adults in middle-income households fell from 61% in 1971 to 50% in 2021. Both the upper tier (14 to 21%) and lower tier (25 to 29%) grew. Income growth for middle-class households has been substantially slower than for upper-class households, meaning real upward mobility into the middle class has become harder despite nominal wage growth.