The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, so the saying goes. And in New York City, the upper middle class gets more upper and the lower middle class gets lower.
The Big Apple ranked No. 6 among the Top 10 U.S. cities where the gap between both ends of the middle class grew the largest, according to an analysis of Census data by Bloomberg News.
In 2011, the difference between those earning 30 percent of the area median income and those earning 80 percent of AMI was $97,600, according to Bloomberg. But by 2016, that gap had increased by $15,300 to $112,900.
New City Council Speaker Corey Johnson earlier this month floated a $400 tax rebate to help middle-class co-op and condo owners.
San Francisco saw the largest separation between both ends of the middle class during that time, with the gap growing by $32,500 to $140,800.
When it comes to the gap between the rich and the poor, San Jose saw the biggest change. The difference between the top 20 percent of households and the bottom 20 percent grew by $74,000 between 2011 and 2016 to $339,000.
Many Californians, fleeing the state’s high cost of living, fled to Idaho, where the state’s capital jumped from No. 76 on Bloomberg’s rich-vs-poor ranking in 2011 to No. 7 in 2016. [Bloomberg] – Rich Bockmann