The article makes the extremely common media error (which is also present in the source research, or at least the press release from Pew announcing it -- the article uses &quot;class&quot; pretty exclusively, the Pew release uses &quot;class&quot; in the headline and much of the body, but also uses &quot;income tier&quot; in some places) of conflating <i>income</i> (which is simply a measure of the amount of money received per year) with <i>class</i> (which is a descriptor of how one relates to society and the economic system.)<p>What it actually is addressing is particular local areas where the share of the local population in a particular definition of the national &quot;middle&quot; of the income distribution is declining. (Well, actually, the article indicates that, but somewhat misrepresents the source research [0], which indicates that the locality-based analysis includes adjustments for local cost of living, so the definitions stated in the NYT article aren&#x27;t actually what the graphics are based on.)<p>(Much of that so-called &quot;middle class&quot; income group would be <i>working</i> class by the conventional definitions used in looking at capitalist&#x2F;mixed economies, and the middle class would extend well into what that study calls the &quot;upper class&quot; -- the traditional lower&#x2F;working, middle, and upper&#x2F;capitalist classes are not defined with the middle being around the median wealth or income, but by the middle being neither completely dependent on wage labor and immediately at risk from its loss like the lower&#x2F;working class nor primarily relying on renting others labor to apply to their own capital, like the upper&#x2F;capitalist class; the middle class has always been almost entirely in the upper half of the income distribution.)<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewsocialtrends.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;11&#x2F;americas-shrinking-middle-class-a-close-look-at-changes-within-metropolitan-areas&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewsocialtrends.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;11&#x2F;americas-shrinking...</a>