AI Summary
5 min readWhy America’s Upper Middle Class Is Growing
The number of American households considered upper middle class has tripled over the last 50 years, according to a new report from the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. Yet the families who have ascended into this tier don't feel rich—a disconnect that reveals something important about how Americans experience their own financial lives.
The Upper Middle Class Is Expanding, Not Shrinking
The middle class has been shrinking, but not because people are getting poorer. Instead, many households have moved up into a higher economic tier. The report defines upper middle class as households earning between $133,000 and $400,000 per year in annual income—not counting wealth from home equity, stock portfolios, or other assets. Even after adjusting for inflation, every income group has gotten richer over the last 40 to 50 years, but the most affluent have gained the most.
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of WSJ What’s News
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:18) **Iran Rejects Ceasefire Proposal Ahead of Trump's Deadline** - Iran rejects a 45-day ceasefire proposal from the U.S. and regional mediators; President Trump calls the counter-proposal "not good enough" but a "significant step."
- 2 (03:33) **Upper Middle Class Is Growing, But Families Don't Feel Rich** - A new report from the American Enterprise Institute shows the number of upper-middle-class households has tripled over 50 years, driven by rising white-collar wages.
- 3 (07:32) **Services Sector Inflation Hits Four-Year High** - The Institute for Supply Management's pricing index for the U.S. services industry rose to 70.7 in March, the largest one-month increase in 13 years.
- 4 (08:05) **BNY Mellon and Robinhood Tapped to Manage New Children's Savings Accounts** - The Trump administration selects BNY Mellon and Robinhood to design and manage tax-deferred savings accounts for children, created under the new tax code.
- 5 (08:42) **Sponsors Drop Out of London Festival Over Kanye West Headliner** - Budweiser parent Anheuser-Busch InBev joins PepsiCo and Diageo in pulling sponsorship from a London music festival after Kanye West was named a headliner.
- 6 (09:01) **OpenAI and Anthropic Race Toward Record-Breaking IPOs** - A deep dive into the financials shows OpenAI expects to spend $121 billion on computing power by 2028, burning $85 billion that year even after doubling sales.
- 7 (10:44) **Artemis II Astronauts Break Distance Record** - The crew on NASA's Artemis II lunar mission has traveled more than 248,655 miles from Earth, surpassing the Apollo 13 record set in 1960.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
P.M. Edition for April 6. New research shows that the upper middle class has tripled in size over the last 50 years. Economics reporter Rachel Ensign explains what’s helping people move up the income ladder. Plus, Iran has rejected a cease-fire proposal from the U.S. a day before President Trump’s deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And OpenAI and Anthropic are both expected to go public later this year. Journal reporter Berber Jin takes a deep dive into their finances and finds their Achilles’ heel is the soaring costs needed to train new AI models. Alex Ossola hosts.
Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from this podcast
WSJ What’s News →