Why $120,000?

The first question everyone asks us is the number. Why $120,000? Why not $100,000, or $75,000, or no line at all? It's a fair question, and the answer is the whole idea of this organization in one paragraph: we drew the line where the working majority ends — not where poverty begins.

The line is a headcount, not a judgment

Start with the only fact that matters. According to Social Security Administration wage statistics for 2023, about 9 in 10 American wage earners — roughly 90 percent — earned under $120,000. More than 150 million Americans received wages that year (SSA, 2023). Do the arithmetic and you get a number politics has never seriously organized: more than 100 million working Americans on the same side of one line.

That's what $120,000 is. It isn't a moral verdict on anyone's paycheck. It isn't a definition of "rich" or "poor." It's a headcount. Draw the line at $120,000 and you have captured nearly every nurse, teacher, mechanic, retail manager, firefighter, farmer, coder, cook, and truck driver in the country — the people who do the work, in one tent, with one voice.

And to be clear about the middle of that tent: the median American wage earner made about $48,000 in net compensation in 2023 (SSA, 2023). Half of all wage earners made less than that. The median household — often two earners pooling paychecks — brought in $80,610 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). The center of gravity of American work sits nowhere near the line. The line is a fence around the whole field, not a description of the average.

Why one clear line beats a sliding scale

We could have built something fuzzier. A cost-of-living-adjusted threshold, different by county. A percentile formula recalculated every year. Something a policy analyst would admire.

We chose one national number instead, for three reasons.

• You can't organize around a formula. A movement grows when a person can hear its name and know instantly whether it's for them. "$120K or Less" answers that question in three seconds. "Adjusted regional earnings percentile" answers it never.
• One line makes one tent. The moment you slice the threshold by geography or occupation, you've told members they're in different boats. They aren't. The Ohio machinist and the California medical tech face the same rising costs, the same shrinking leverage, and the same feeling that nobody in power is counting them. One line means one membership, one vote each, one voice.
• Bright lines are honest. A formula can be quietly tuned. A single public number can't. Everyone can check it, argue with it, and hold us to it. That's how we want every part of this organization to work.

The line is a fence around the whole field, not a description of the average.

"But $120K is a lot of money in my town"

It is. Let's not pretend otherwise. In much of America, a $120,000 salary is a very good living, and a household earning near the line is doing far better than most of its neighbors. If you live in one of those places, the line can feel too generous — like we stretched the tent past the people who need it.

Here's our honest answer: the line is deliberately generous, and that's the point.

First, costs are wildly uneven. The same paycheck that buys comfort in a small town gets eaten alive in a coastal metro, where the median existing home now sells for about $407,000 nationally (National Association of Realtors, 2024) and far more in the expensive markets. A generous national line is the only way one tent can honestly hold both the $48,000 median earner and the $110,000 city nurse whose rent takes it right back.

Second, the squeeze doesn't check your ZIP code. Consumer prices rose about 21 percent from January 2020 to December 2024 (Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI) — everywhere. The average employer family health premium hit $25,572 a year, with workers directly paying about $6,296 of it (KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey, 2024) — everywhere. When costs outrun paychecks, they outrun them in Toledo and in Tacoma alike.

Third — and this is the strategic heart of it — a big tent is the only kind that wins. Movements built on narrow definitions of who's struggling spend their energy policing the border of their own membership. We would rather err on the side of including a family that's doing okay than exclude a million families who aren't. Nine in ten wage earners is not a constituency anyone in Washington can wave away. Eleven in twenty would be.

What the line is not

Three things the $120,000 line does not mean, stated plainly so no one has to guess:

• It's not resentment of those above it. Plenty of people earning more than $120,000 work hard, worry about costs, and agree with much of our platform. They're welcome as allies. The line defines who the organization is built for, not who it's angry at.
• It's not a means test. Membership is free and we will not audit your W-2. The line is an identity and an organizing principle, not a gate with a guard.
• It's not forever sacred. The number reflects today's wage data. If the data moves, members — one member, one vote — can move the line. Nothing about this organization is above its membership, including its name.

The quiet power of naming a majority

Here is what we've noticed: Americans earning under $120,000 are talked about constantly — as "the middle class," "working families," "everyday Americans" — and organized almost never. Each of those phrases is soft enough that politicians can pour anything into it. A number is different. A number has edges. A number can be checked against the Social Security Administration's own tables. A number tells more than 100 million people, with receipts: you are not a scattered audience of individual strugglers; you are the overwhelming majority of everyone who earns a wage in this country.

Majorities that know they're majorities behave differently. They stop asking and start expecting. That is what the line is for. That's why it's in our name. Your work. Your voice. Your future — and now, your number.