As President Trump prepares to outline his economic agenda, Vice President J.D. Vance has previewed a message centered on reshoring manufacturing, lowering energy costs, and igniting what he calls a new “Trump boom.” But beneath headline economic indicators showing moderating inflation and steady job growth lies a deeper anxiety among middle-income Americans: the sense that getting by is no longer enough, and getting ahead feels increasingly out of reach.
That theme was the focus of a recent discussion on Chicago’s Morning Answer, where Dan Proft spoke with Jordan McGillis, a fellow at the Economic Innovation Group, about what some economists have dubbed the “great decompression” — the widening gap between median earners and households in the upper quintile.
McGillis pointed to long-term income data to illustrate the shift. In 1975, the median married family with children earned the equivalent of about $70,000 in today’s dollars, while a family at the 80th percentile earned roughly $105,000 — a gap of about 50 percent. Today, the median married family earns around $130,000, but the 80th percentile household earns approximately $240,000, expanding the gap to roughly 85 percent.
While incomes have risen across the board over the past half century, McGillis argued that the pace of advancement has diverged sharply. Households in the upper middle class have pulled further ahead, reshaping not only income distributions but also access to neighborhoods, schools, and social networks.
“It’s not just income,” McGillis said. “It translates to where people live and the kinds of opportunities their children have.” He described a dynamic in which upper middle-class families increasingly cluster in high-performing school districts and resource-rich communities, limiting exposure and opportunity for families in the middle of the income spectrum.
Proft suggested that much of the anxiety may stem less from immediate hardship and more from comparative pressure — the perception that others who were once only modestly better off are now significantly wealthier. McGillis agreed, noting that human beings are inherently social and comparative. Even if material conditions improve, the widening distance between income tiers can create a psychological sense of stagnation.
Both men emphasized that sluggish economic growth compounds the issue. During periods of rapid expansion, rising incomes across the board can soften the sting of inequality. But in an era of modest growth, households may feel stuck even if they are technically better off than previous generations.
McGillis said sustained growth — particularly through supply-side reforms — could ease some of the tension. He pointed to deregulation, expanded domestic energy production, and streamlined permitting for large-scale projects like semiconductor facilities as potential levers to accelerate economic expansion.
At the same time, he cautioned that technological change and globalization are structural forces unlikely to reverse. Advances in artificial intelligence and automation may create new middle-class opportunities, but those jobs will look different from the factory work that defined mid-20th century prosperity. Future growth may be concentrated in advanced trades, construction, infrastructure services, and small business ownership.
Proft noted that many of today’s high-earning tradespeople are business owners, underscoring the growing importance of capital ownership in wealth creation. McGillis agreed, arguing that returns to capital increasingly outpace returns to labor, reinforcing the decompression effect.
As policymakers seek to address what is often labeled an “affordability crisis,” McGillis suggested that the deeper issue is upward mobility. Voters, he said, are less concerned with survival than with stability and legacy — the ability to build wealth, secure opportunity for their children, and feel confident about their trajectory.
Whether the administration’s focus on reshoring industry, energy expansion, and regulatory reform can meaningfully boost growth remains to be seen. But for many middle-class families, the challenge is not simply paying today’s bills — it is closing the widening gap between stability and aspiration in an economy that feels increasingly stratified.