Is $100,000 middle class in America?

There’s a prolonged pause when I ask Lyft driver Gaby Osegueda if her family is middle class. Her smile fades as she thinks about it for a while.

“Yeah, I think so. I don’t even know what the middle class is anymore,” says Osegueda, who with her husband earns nearly $100,000 a year in the San Francisco area.

The majority of Americans — 62 percent — identify as “middle class,” according to a Gallup poll conducted in June. It’s the highest percent of people feeling that way since 2003. But a lot of Americans are like Osegueda: They feel middle class, but they aren’t sure what it means.

Just who exactly is middle class is in the national spotlight again as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress craft tax cuts for individuals and corporations that they say will primarily benefit the middle. But amid this discussion, the middle class has been defined in different ways. Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, recently discussed how a “typical family” making $100,000 a year would benefit.

Trump has espoused the value of the plan to truckers, who make around $41,000 a year.

So what is the middle class? In America, an income of $59,000 a year is smack dab in the middle, according to the U.S. Census.

But it’s not that simple. There is no exact definition of middle class, and a deep look at the data shows a wide variety of individuals could be part of it, depending on where they live and how big their family is. The middle class in San Francisco, where Osegueda lives, is not the same as it is in Peoria, Ill.

Osegueda and her husband are in their early 30s. Both have college degrees — she also has a master’s — and launched careers in San Francisco’s booming tech industry. She worked in human resources and he’s an engineer. They love San Francisco, but a year ago they moved to Pacifica, a suburb, where rent is more affordable and their young son has space to play. Despite making nearly $100,000 a year, they aren’t sure they’ll ever own a home of their own, at least not anywhere in the Bay Area.

It’s not just San Francisco. A quick glance at the median income in these six American cities highlights how much it varies:

• Newton, Mass.: $122,100

• Washington: $70,800

• Denver: $53,600

• Dallas: $43,800

• Birmingham, Ala.: $31,200

• Flint, Mich.: $24,900 Now take a look at how median income varies by family size. The median income for single people in America is just $30,400. For a household of two, it jumps to $65,600. For three, it’s nearly $77,000. For four, it’s $91,000 (not far from Cohn’s definition of $100,000 for a family of four).

When Americans talk about the “middle class,” they are usually thinking about a range, not just the specific income dead in the middle. Pew Research says the middle class runs from $42,000 to $125,000. They define middle as a household of three with an income that falls between two-thirds and double the median income.

By Pew’s calculation, just over half of American households are truly middle class, far smaller than the 62 percent who selfidentify that way.