Why the middle class is disappearing in Massachusetts

By Esmy Jimenez, Aaron Pressman, and Mara Kardas-Nelson

Alexa Arena, a 35-year-old college-educated professional, moved in with her parents to save on rent. Though she works full time, the classic trappings of a middle-class life — the kind she had growing up — now feel out of reach. “I don’t even know what the middle is anymore.” she said. “I’ve been living basically paycheck to paycheck.”

Lynn Handly, 61, a state worker living in Brockton, began living alone for the first time after her children moved out of the house and she got a divorce. She felt a sense of freedom for a while, but is now left worrying about retirement. “People think when you work for the state, you’re spoiled, but you’re not,” she said. (The Globe is using Handly’s

middle and maiden names for fear of reprisal by her employer.)

Sasha White, 33, a public school music teacher who lives in Dorchester and owes $123,000 in student loans, carefully juggles each of her household bills. She feels too close to the edge of a financial cliff not to. “Student debt, I put that on the back burner for now,” she said. “The only thing that I take care of are things that are going to immediately come after me.”

All three women make enough money to be considered middle class — a status that

once conferred financial security, even a measure of comfort. The ability to buy a

house and a car. Pantries stocked and utilities paid each month. Enough left over

to take an occasional vacation, maybe help their kids with college and with a

downpayment on a starter home. But those days are gone.

Today, the middle class in Massachusetts is being hollowed out. In 2000, about

half of Boston-area households qualified as middle class. Now only 41 percent

remain. Most moved into the upper-income group, with about half as many sinking

down to the low income group.

Driving the squeeze is a stratospheric rise in inequality. Since 2006, the state’s

richest 5 percent have seen their income soar, earning 34 times more than the

bottom 20 percent. At the same time, more people at the lower end of the middle

class are losing their tenuous grasp and slipping out of it.

The number of households reporting over $200,000 of annual income in

Massachusetts, moving up and out of the middle class, jumped fivefold from under

90,000 in 1999 to more than 420,000 in 2022, according to the most recent IRS

data.

For those left in the middle, holding onto the lifestyle they have feels increasingly

precarious — and increasingly expensive.

Corporations have gone from almost never having mass job cuts 50 years ago to

laying off hundreds and thousands even as they report record profits.

Child care expenses here are among the highest in the nation. The total cost of

getting a degree from a public university has tripled since 1999. And home prices

around Boston have more than tripled over the same period, while rents have

skyrocketed 140 percent.

“When I was growing up, ten grand was a down payment on a house, not an

apartment rental,” said Wendy Millar-Page, a 55-year-old municipal worker living

in Winthrop.

If the middle-class squeeze continues, it could jeopardize the state’s future and

undermine the country’s economy, reliant as it is on consumer spending, warned

Mechele Dickerson, an expert in the decline of the middle class at the University of

Texas Austin.

“If you want to have a thriving economy you have to have many human beings who

are doing the spending,” Dickerson said. “That’s not going to work unless you have

a thriving and financially secure middle class.”

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