A Middle-Class Stronghold’s Uncertain Future
About 63 percent of adults in Sheboygan make between $41,641 and $124,924, meaning the area has one of the highest shares of middle-class households in the country, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. Nationally, only 51 percent of adults are middle-class.
Wisconsin is, for the middle class, the promised land. Four out of the top 10 metropolitan areas with the highest share of middle-income families are in Wisconsin ..
.. Those areas have what other parts of America once had in spades: a big manufacturing sector, strong unions, good schools, and a low cost of living.
.. Pew defines middle-income households as those with an income two-thirds to double that of the overall median household income.
.. In Sheboygan, middle-class median income fell 17 percent, from $80,281 to $66,719, according to Pew. This was the biggest drop in income of any middle-class area, though nationally, middle-class households lost ground in 222 of 229 metropolitan areas from 1999 to 2014.
.. The only way the company could stay and remain competitive was to pay the same low wages that new manufacturing employees made in the rest of the country, he wrote.
.. Now, workers like Bob Bastasic still earn $34 an hour at Kohler, but new employees can’t make much more than $18.
.. The share of Americans living in middle-class households has declined to just over 50 percent today, from 61 percent in 1970
.. They turn people who were once full-time employees into contractors, cut back on wages and benefits, and do everything possible to maximize productivity without sharing those gains with the workers.
.. Those with very high wages make 41 percent more than they did in 1979, while middle-wage workers earn just 6 percent more
.. the size of the upper-middle class, defined as a family-of-three making at least $100,000, grew to 29.4 percent of the population in 2014, from 12.9 percent in 1979.
.. Indeed, in 1979, the poor and middle class earned 70 percent of all incomes and the rich and upper middle class earned 30 percent, according to the Urban Institute. By 2014, those groups had swapped, with the poor and middle class earning just 37 percent of all incomes, with the rich and upper middle class earning 63 percent