One needs only to browse the headlines, or perhaps observe the bustling action at your neighborhood thrift store, to realize that America’s middle classes have been faring poorly lately. Here, a few recent headlines that collectively sum up the state of the middle class:

“Many in the U.S. slip from the middle class, study finds”
According to a new report from Pew Charitable Trusts (covered by the Washington Post, among others), the phenomena of “downward mobility” was common even before the economy collapsed in 2007. Among Americans who grew up as members of the middle class, 21% of white men and a whopping 39% of African American men qualified as downwardly mobile—falling below the 30th percentile in income, or earning 20% less than their parents—before the recession presumably put them in an even worse financial state.

Read the full article at time.com.