In recent years, people were able to offset some of these pressures because their investments were doing well. The markets were really high, and that too has given us all a reality check. Over the last year, and a bit since the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates in March of 2022, the American middle class has lost somewhere between $2 or $3 trillion in wealth as an overall class.
The American middle class is feeling the squeeze: inflation, wages that haven’t kept up, higher interest rates and fluctuating markets are all adding up to a loss of collective wealth. Bloomberg’s Shawn Donnan and a team of journalists are following the economic lives of two dozen middle class families across the country as we head into the 2024 election. In this first installment we hear from four of them. What does it mean to be middle class in America today–and how will their shifting fortunes influence the way they vote?
Read more: The US Middle Class's Economic Anxiety Will Decide the 2024 Election
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