About half of Americans define themselves as “middle class” or “upper-middle class.” But what does “middle class” mean in America? And equally important, what does the “middle class” mean for America? For most, self-identification as “middle class” is an assessment of family income. If you think your income is roughly in the middle of most Americans’ incomes, you likely would describe yourself as “middle class.” Yet, middle-class status means something much more fundamental and only partly economic. At its core, to be “middle class” in America means to have stability.
President Biden has often said that the middle class built America and unions built the middle class. In this post, I will describe "middle class" as defined by stability and explain how stability makes America’s middle class essential to our democracy, our economy, and the successful functioning of our communities.
Understanding middle-class families requires an honest take on the struggles faced by too many families that are outside the middle class. Low-income families often lead precarious existences not of their own making. Low-wage workers are more likely to work two or more jobs to support themselves and their families, and even with a second job tend to earn less than those with a single job. They also experience a great deal of volatility in their employment, often earning more in one year (or even month) and less in the next because of job changes, job losses, or reductions in work hours. Even when they have a job, low-income workers are much more likely to work for employers that impose unpredictable and frequently changing work schedules with little advance notice. All this volatility is antithetical to stability. It requires changing plans, juggling jobs and families, and an ongoing struggle for subsistence.
Inadequate and unreliable incomes are made more risky by low-income families' lack of a financial reserve. Low-income families are significantly less likely to own a home, which can make their living arrangements temporary and inhibit their ability to accumulate wealth that might provide a long-term economic cushion. Unsurprisingly, low-income families have substantially smaller retirement savings, largely because their employers are less likely to match their contributions to a retirement account. So, they have little if any savings available in case of an emergency or for retirement.
Low-income families are also much more likely to be food insecure (i.e., not enough healthy food to eat at each meal), which contributes to increased risks of obesity, asthma, depression, and lower cognitive function . These and other health crises make life more volatile and heighten financial risk. Most people lacking health insurance are low-income working families, so any family member’s health event can have dire economic consequences. Further, while low-wage workers need and take family and medical leave from work at the same rate as non-low-wage workers, they are much less likely to work for an employer that provides paid leave. Again, any family or medical emergency, or even a child’s doctor’s appointment or ordinary sick day, will reduce these workers’ incomes, at best, and risk their jobs, at worst.
At its core, to be “middle class” in America means to have stability.
Understanding the volatility in low-income workers’ lives helps us to understand that reaching the “middle class,” in large part, means having achieved a degree of stability, especially economic stability. When we think of a middle-class family, we imagine they have sufficient economic resources to afford reliable housing, food security, good health supported by health insurance, consistent (but not lavish) consumer spending, regular tax paying, and some modicum of savings and other wealth. This wealth provides a cushion in the event of an economic shock (e.g., an accident, illness, or loss of employment), allows some investment in necessary education for family members, and supplements Social Security in retirement. Note that this focus on stability is very different approach from the definitions of “middle-class income” advanced by some economists. The amount of income alone is not enough. The sufficiency of a family's income determines whether it can achieve stability in its life.
Stability matters to middle-class families for obvious reasons, but it also matters to our society, democracy, and economy in at least two ways. First, middle-class families with sufficient resources can care for themselves. Healthy, well-fed people in reliable housing with steady incomes generally do not have to rely on others, including government, for the basics of life. They may need government services or other forms of community support at times, especially emergencies, but they are generally able to live autonomously and leave societal resources to those who need them most. This is not a judgment on those who must rely on more extensive community support. Rather, it is merely an observation that middle-class families typically need not compete for those resources.
Second, middle-class families’ members have the resources to contribute to others in society. Personal consumption expenditures have grown to two-thirds of the American economy and middle-class families contribute mightily by buying goods and services. Middle-class families and most other working families pay substantial taxes that make schools, roads, libraries, public safety, Social Security, Medicare, and other public services possible. Because they are not locked in an ongoing struggle for subsistence, middle-class Americans also have time.
Of course, some of that time goes to leisure. Yet, middle-class families also have time to volunteer for or contribute money to community institutions that house the unhoused, fight racism and sexism, feed the hungry, defend personal liberty, support those with substance abuse disorders, or protect the environment. They may participate in institutions that build the community in other ways, like civic clubs, affinity organizations, and faith institutions. Middle-class families also have time to participate in the community discourse and seek to influence decisionmakers. They may be more likely to engage with, and perhaps organize, their neighbors around the issues they care about most. They have the time to vote, and so they vote in larger numbers than lower-income voters. They also have time to support their preferred candidates for office. In other words, they can participate actively in our democracy in ways that are large and small.
The ability to engage in all or some of these activities --- economic behaviors as well as democratic engagement and community building and maintenance --- also are part of what it means to be middle class in America. Again, this is not to suggest that lower-income Americans fail to participate and do not care about their communities. They care and they participate. The difference is the availability of resources, including time. Middle-class families have more, and so they can do more.
Unions are self-evidently vital to the economic stability that defines middle-class life in America. Unionized workers earn more than non-union workers, although unions also tend to raise wages for non-union workers in their industries. Unionized workers can bargain with employers over wages, hours, and benefits based on a clear understanding of their families’ needs. By contrast, most non-union workers have no choice but to accept wages and hours set by their employers to maximize the employers’ profits and serve their other interests. Also, unionized workers know what they will earn from month-to-month, and usually year-to-year, because it is written in a legally enforceable contract they can read. Their incomes are both stable and predictable.
Unionized workers are more likely to have health insurance and a retirement plan. While many have been forced into health plans with higher deductibles and premiums, unionized workers are better off than non-union workers in this regard. As a result, union workers’ families get more and better health care and their risks of economic catastrophe due to illness or injury are significantly reduced. Unionized workers also tend to stay in their jobs longer, in part because they are protected by collective bargaining agreements enforced by their unions that guard against unjust dismissals and discrimination --- an important stabilizer in an employee’s work life. At its most basic, longer job tenure means a more stable income for a longer period of time and, again, the ability to plan for a secure future. Unions are also channels for a wide array of benefits ranging from educational discounts, credit cards, various forms of insurance, and mortgage assistance to employee assistance plans that assist with family and personal challenges. All these benefits help families to stabilize themselves economically and otherwise.
In all these ways, unions help workers to secure their places in the middle class, but they also can be bridges for low-income workers and others into the middle class. Unions can improve wages, benefits, and job quality sufficiently to transform low-income, volatile employment into stable, good-quality jobs that will support a family. In other words, unions can strengthen and expand the middle class.
Again, unions provide much more than economic stability. Unions are important to middle-class Americans’ role in their communities and our democracy. Unions empower workers in the workplace, but also wield workers' collective power in the political and policy arenas. Based on their members’ preferences, unions endorse candidates for public office and lobby government officials to benefit their members and all workers on critical public policy issues. Unions enter into coalitions with groups aligned with their social and economic justice agendas as well as groups with whom they need to reach a policy consensus on difficult issues. Unions often speak out on public policy and cultural issues that extend beyond the particular economic concerns of their members. As a result, unions help to produce public policies that benefit all workers. In all these ways, unions and their allies serve as checks on and counterweights to corporate power’s influence on governments and the public discourse that has contributed to the degradation and decline of America's middle class.
Unions also play an important, and little discussed, role as community organizations. Certainly, they provide fellowship and mutual support to their members, members’ families, and retirees, and advocate for their interests in their communities. But unions also contribute as much as any civic club, affinity organization, or faith institution to building and maintaining communities. Union members have a long history of contributing to charity. Unions also promote and often organize volunteer activities by their members ranging from coaching the local Little League team to responding to natural disasters. Unions are also the centerpiece of an important community celebration in many parts of the country: the venerable Labor Day parade. The centrality of unions to their communities may be best illustrated by community members rallying around unions during strikes, including right now.
Defining the American middle class with a focus on stability heightens the urgency of strengthening and expanding the middle class. The middle class is a central pillar of the American edifice. The likelihood that the American edifice will stand tall and secure depends in large part on whether that central pillar is wide, well-constructed, and strong. As the pillar goes, so goes the edifice. The surest way to ensure that it remains standing deep into the future is for the pillar to be union made.
