According to research from Stephen Rose, a nonresident fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, the range for … Men with college diplomas, however, saw their incomes fall 28.5%, from $95,734 to $68,406. Lower-Class Income. Many of these people are best described not only as working class but as lower-middle class. The middle class constitutes a slim majority of the U.S. population (52%), but that is still less than it has been in nearly half a century. The usual conception is to think of working class as a symbolic label representing a place in the socioeconomic hierarchy.
For example, among those with an income less than $30,000 a year, 42% of those not retired use the label working class, compared with 21% of those who are retired. Approximately 29 percent of Americans fall into the lower class based on income. But the working class still fared worse, suffering a 47% drop in income, from $51,491 to $27,230.