In some Bay Area cities, making $200,000 a year means you’re middle class

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Middle class incomes in some Bay Area cities are among the fastest growing in the country, but the definition of middle class in the region is reaching staggering levels.

San Francisco ranked number one for middle-class income growth among the nation’s 200 largest cities, followed by Oakland and Fremont in second and third place, according to a new study from personal finance website GOBankRates.

Two other Bay Area cities were in the top 10 — San Jose ranked sixth and Sunnyvale came in eighth. The study ranked cities based on a combination of household income measures from the U.S. Census Bureau over the past five years.

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The study’s definition of middle class is based on median household income, and with the Bay Area’s median income already among the nation’s highest, the definition of middle class here is also among the highest.

Andrew DePietro, a finance writer at GOBankingRates and the study’s author, said the standard he used to define middle class was household income between two-thirds and double the city’s median — the same measure used by Pew Research.

That means that in Fremont, where the median household income is $122,200, households that make at least $81,500 and up to $244,400 are considered middle class by GOBankingRates. Median household income in the city grew 23 percent over the past five years. That was the highest range among the five Bay Area cities. In San Jose, where the median household income of $96,600 has grown 19 percent in the past five years, middle class is $64,400 to $193,300.

Someone outside the Bay Area might look at a household making $200,000 a year and think they’re wealthy, DePietro said.

“No no no, these are middle class, for these regions,” he said.

Among the Bay Area cities in the study, Sunnyvale had the second highest income requirement to fall in the middle class — $78,900 to $236,600. That’s more than twice the range for Salt Lake City, which came in fifth for middle class growth in the study and had an income range of $36,000 to $108,000. And Oakland had the lowest income range at $42,200 to $126,500.

Those ranges can be surprising because a lot of people mis-classify themselves as middle class, DePietro said.

“When I was doing this story it made me think, personally, yeah I’m barely technically middle class,” said DePietro, who lives in Los Angeles.

A GOBankingRates poll in December found a fifth of Americans think they’re middle class, but in reality they are not. Most of that is people who are low income but consider themselves middle class.

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DePietro said Bay Area cities, as well as Denver, Seattle and Portland, Ore., have some of the most successful middle classes in the country because of the changing nature of middle class. Before, he said, middle class tended to apply to people with a craft or a small business.

“The new modern middle class is based on tech, health care,” he said. “Those sectors are growing,” particularly in the Bay Area.

RELATED: Is the California Dream Over? A five-county poll conducted for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and this news organization also found that more than one-third of Bay Area apartment renters and one-quarter of residents in their 20s and 30s say they are struggling to afford their housing.

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