What Salary Do You Need to Be Middle Class Where You Live?

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.