MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: America’s middle class making a major comeback under Donald Trump.
On this Labor Day, the American middle class survives. Indeed, it’s expanding. That’s not the conclusion of some arcane scholarly study. It’s the judgment of Americans themselves, though it hasn’t received much attention from politicians or the media. Most Americans have moved beyond the fears bred by the Great Recession. The middle-class comeback may be the year’s most underreported story.
Public opinion polls depict the change. In its surveys, Gallup regularly asks people to report their social class. They are given five choices: upper class; upper middle; middle; working; and lower class. In 2006, before the recession, 60 percent of Americans identified themselves as either middle or upper middle class, while 38 percent chose working class and lower class. Only 1 percent put themselves in the upper class.
The 2008-09 financial crisis and the Great Recession demolished these long-standing class patterns. The middle class shrunk dramatically amid high unemployment, home foreclosures and heavy debts. As late as 2015, the country was almost evenly split between those in the middle and upper middle classes (51 percent) and those in the working and lower classes (48 percent), according to Gallup.
No more. In its latest poll on class identity, done in June, Gallup found that 62 percent put themselves in the broadly defined middle class, while only 36 percent classified themselves as working class or lower class. The shifts, said Gallup, began in 2016 and demonstrated “that subjective social class identification has stabilized close to the prevailing pattern observed before 2009.”
This is no fluke.
Totally and completely unrelated: Summer employers hired American amid Trump visa squeeze What happens when guest-worker visas run out? “President Donald Trump’s harsh criticism of immigration programs and Congress’ refusal to lift a cap on work visas meant many seasonal businesses had to hire American this summer — and pay their workers more.”