You can’t define middle class by a specific dollar amount for the whole country. An income that makes someone upper middle class in say Oklahoma is poverty level in the SF Bay Area. I define it as being able to afford to buy a home, send your kids to decent schools, save for retirement, etc. That’s vastly more money some places than others.
Pretty much this. My wife and I worked hard and saved what we could. We managed to be able to buy a house in a nice area of the SF-SJ Bay Area. We were able to pay our daughter's college expenses. She managed to complete the BA degree in the UC system in three years.
She's been working for almost two years, but she was living with us during that time. She determined living on her own or even with a friend would chew up most if not all of her paycheck. Cost of living in the SF-SJ Bay Area is brutal.
A business trip last year found her in Texas, which she fell in love with. She also made more friends there in a short time than during her entire K-12 years at home (that's another story in itself).
She has since relocated to Texas and is working there, and she has managed to save enough from living at home to buy a house there (probably will happen a couple years from now). That wasn't going to happen if she stayed in the SF-SJ Bay Area.