In an NBC News Business article reporting on the U.S. Census Bureau’s report on the nation’s real median household income, Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert said that he doesn’t think the middle class is disappearing but that, “it could be that there are more people who feel ‘that they’re middle class hanging by their thumbs — barely middle class.’” In the Sept. 17 article, “'Survivors, scrapers:' Why the middle class feels like it just can't get ahead,” Gilbert commented that the recovery had been very slow. Many other publications across the country published the NBC article.
Gilbert was also quoted in a Sept. 17 The Christian Science Monitor article titled “U.S. Poverty Rate Steady at 15 Percent but Lower Class Is Booming” also focused on the U.S. Census Bureau report. He said that “the jump in lower class self-identification is ‘extraordinary.’”
