Over the past year, I’ve watched a steady stream of friends and professional colleagues lose their jobs. For a group long considered insulated, this moment feels unprecedented. Upper-middle-class professionals who assumed the economy would always work for us are now saying the quiet part out loud: it isn’t.
We feel “poor rich,” aware of both the privilege we’ve always had and the unexpected instability that could take it away.
And it’s personal. After 20 years of stable employment, my husband and I recently faced back-to-back career blows. I was laid off from the University of Chicago as higher-ed budgets tightened under mounting political pressure; he lost his job at a Midwest-based digital health startup as the funding market pulled back. Just a few years earlier, I had been recruited into senior roles with raises and expanded scope. The outlook was good. Then it wasn’t.
Now we are facing an unexpected reality. Unemployment rose in November to the highest level in four years. Interview processes are long and demanding and can stretch on for months with little leverage on the candidate side. Some positions draw more than 1,000 applicants. Salaries are lower. Expectations are higher.
I know many people have lived with this kind of instability, but we haven’t. We have a safety net of savings, but I’m acutely aware that many families don’t. That awareness sharpened for me recently while stocking our community free fridge, when I met a mom in tears, worried about feeding her kids. I am lucky that isn’t my immediate fear.
For us, this instability is new, and it’s forced us to confront how fragile the economy really is. Our infrastructure of employer-based health care and expensive child care has been held together with duct tape and relies on a weak social safety net that is ripping apart.
And the playbook of past generations no longer applies. We’re told to invest in education, live within our means and keep six months of cash in the bank. But that isn’t enough in this moment of intense economic insecurity when the job market is bleak and everyday life costs so much. The world we were doing everything right for simply no longer exists.
The consequences show up quickly at home. We’ve pulled back spending from local and sustainable businesses. We’ve paused retirement contributions and college savings for our kids. We’re paying far more for marketplace health insurance and worrying about what happens next now that the Affordable Care Act subsidies have expired. We aren’t able to give to causes we’ve long supported at the exact moment they’re under greater strain, from food banks to public media.
When households like ours cut back, it ripples outward. Our lower spending impacts the caregiver whose income depended on us, the home contractor we didn’t hire, the small farmers who lose steady customers. Multiply this experience by tens of thousands of families and you start to see why this isn’t just personal anxiety. It’s an economic signal.
I know that upper-middle-class families are not worse off than low-income households facing cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, or Medicaid. We aren’t. But what’s happening to us isn’t isolated. Our sudden instability isn’t the beginning of a new problem. It’s the next domino to fall in an economy that has already hollowed out the middle and pushed lower-income families to the edge.
Those in power would prefer we close our eyes, but the unraveling is right in front of us. Economists sometimes debate whether downturns like this are driven by “vibes” or facts. For this group, the vibes have become reality. Even people with jobs fear they aren’t immune.
Contributing to the problem is the economic fog we’re operating in and the rapid advance of artificial intelligence, which is creating additional uncertainty about the future of many skilled occupations. Policymakers cannot make informed decisions if data sources are eroded and they’re navigating in the dark.
If there’s one thing that must happen now, it’s this: The federal government must face economic reality at all brackets. This starts with restoring economic transparency. Only then can Congress take meaningful steps to reduce labor-market pressures and support households across the income spectrum.
This is not a plea for sympathy; it’s a canary in a coal mine warning about a structural economic failure that is hurting the country at all levels. Ignoring this reality doesn’t make it go away. It makes it worse. This is about what could happen to more families like ours if we keep pretending everything is fine.
Sarah Rand is a strategic communications consultant for mission-driven organizations. She lives in Evanston with her husband and two children.