A college degree may not be the ticket to middle class living the way it once may have been.
At least that's not the college graduates are saying now, with just 64%saying they feel like they belong to the middle or upper class. Economist Pia Orrenius with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas says times have changed, and so has the job market.
“When we look at where the jobs are growing fastest; they’ve been growing fastest at the bottom and top of income distribution and slowest in the middle,” she explained.
So what is middle class today? Orrenius says it's a moving target.
“The most important thing the economy can do for us that if you’re born poor you can reach the middle class and get progressively better off in terms of your living standard,” Orrenius said.
But if you want a hard definition, she says it would be when you earn between 40 thousand and 120 thousand dollars a year.