America's middle-class is struggling, and as City Council Speaker Christine Quinn emphasized in her State of the City speech Monday, New York City's middle-class is too. Like, really struggling.
Quinn described an "affordability crisis"in the city and outlined a plan to borrow money and build 40,000 new middle-income apartments. "I refuse to accept the notion that large portions of our city are destined to become a luxury only available to the wealthiest among us," she said.
So how bad is it? Gothamist reports that Quinn's office also released a report with a sobering series of graphs (see below) depicting this "middle-class squeeze."
City Council defines "middle class" as those with a household income within 100 to 300 percent of the area median income (AMI). In New York City, that means an income ranging from $66,400 to $199,200:
Some of the report's takeaways: the median middle-class income has plummeted, middle-class unemployment rates are up, housing costs drain a bigger chunk of middle-class incomes here than almost anywhere else in the country, and jobs that pay a middle-class wage are becoming increasingly scarce.
Are you surprised? Maybe not. After all, it was just in September that we heard income inequality in New York City rivaled that of of some sub-Saharan nations. And before that, we heard that Brooklyn alone has 4 of the nation's top 25 most gentrifying zip codes.
For more on Quinn's plan to slow the "middle class squeeze" go here.
