While the consistently pessimistic and erroneous Louis Uchitelle is reassuring elitists that America’s middle class is insecure and in need of help, economist Steve Rose is crunching some numbers.

The approach used here tracks family incomes over 15 years for people in their prime-earning years…

These numbers provide a basis for estimating the size of the group with economic interests aligned with Democratic Party based on living standards. If the narrow definition of including only the first two groups is used, then the numbers of 19 percent of males and 27 percent of females are probably much smaller than most progressive commentators would estimate.

But here is the kicker:

[Between 1959 and 2003] there has been a large increase in the number of the best-paying jobs with the share of the upper tier growing by 14 percentage points, the share of middle tier remaining almost constant, and the share in the lower tier declining by 12 percentage points. Contrary to what some on the left might think, the share of bad jobs fell significantly as more workers with postsecondary education moved into an expanding set of managerial and professional jobs.

Read the whole thing. Twice. Especially if you are Louis Uchitelle.

Thanks to Michael “rational exuberance” Mandel for the pointer.