THE BIG SQUEEZEY

New York’s middle class gettingg left behind

The middle class is an endangered species in New York.

Household incomes for middle-class families in the Empire State grew by 4.4 percent over the past five years — roughly half of the gain experienced by the state’s wealthiest families, a report out Tuesday revealed.

In fact, New York was the worst state in the US in which to be middle class, the report found, based on wage growth in the middle class and on the disparity between that growth and the increased earnings of each state’s wealthiest families.

Middle-class families — defined as those in the middle 20 percent of wage earners — took home just 13.5 percent of all the state income.

That was dead last in the country, according to the report from 24/7 Wall St., a financial news site.

By comparison, the state’s top 20 percent of earners accounted for 54.2 percent of all income earned in New York, according to the report, which analyzed average pretax income data from the Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey.

The report covered income in the years 2011-2015. It showed New York’s wealthiest families saw their income grow by 8.7 percent over that span — nearly double the gain of middle-class families.

For the wealthiest 5 percent of New York households, their share of the in- come pie is quite generous, the report found: 26 percent, No. 1 in the US.

“Americans who lost their jobs managed to eventually find work again, but often at a lower pay,” the report said.

“The result was that even as the stock market soared and unemployment im- proved, incomes among the nation’s middle class — often referred to as the backbone of the economy — fell.”

Over the past half-decade, the top 20 percent of all US households saw its earnings rise about 1.5 times faster than earnings for middleclass households.

And for the top 5 percent, the income growth rate has been roughly double the rate recorded for the middle class.

Nine states in particular are experiencing worrisome carve-outs to their middle class, the report found: New York, Wyoming, Alaska, Ver- mont, Arizona, South Dakota, Idaho, Kansas and Montana.

“Since union membership began to rapidly decline in the 1980s, the share of income going to the Top 10 percent of earners has increased dramatically,” it said. rmorgan@nypost.com