Am I Considered Middle Class in Canada? Income Ranges by Household Size

Canada has no official definition of the middle class or official middle-class income line. The OECD, which compares incomes across its member countries, uses a simple one: a household is middle income if its income is between 75% and 200% of the national median, using after-tax income adjusted for household size. Applied to Statistics Canada’s latest figures (2024 incomes), that gives these after-tax ranges:

All amounts are household income after income tax, for everyone in the household combined, in 2024 dollars. They are worked out from Statistics Canada’s after-tax Low Income Measure (Table 11-10-0232-01), which is set at 50% of the median adjusted after-tax household income: the median is the LIM times 2, the start of the band the LIM times 1.5, and the top the LIM times 4. They are a statistical guide, not a government classification.

How the OECD defines middle income

The OECD’s 2019 study Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class defines the middle-income class as people living in households with incomes from 75% to 200% of the national median, where incomes are disposable incomes corrected for household size. It also splits that band in three:

So in the table above, a household between the first two columns is lower middle income, between the median and the 150% column is middle middle income, and between that and the last column is upper middle income. Below the band is lower income (the low-income lines are on am I considered low income in Canada?); above it is upper income.

“Adjusted for household size” means a household’s income is divided by the square root of the number of people in it. That is why a family of four needs twice the income of a single person, not four times, to sit at the same point in the distribution.

Where common salaries land

The band is measured on after-tax household income, so a salary has to be turned into take-home pay first, and the household’s other earners added. The examples below use 2026 Ontario income tax, CPP and EI on employment income, and leave out benefits such as the Canada Child Benefit, which would add to a family’s income.

Compare the last column with the OECD band: 75% to 200% of the median is middle income. The same take-home pay places a family much lower than a single person. The median is for 2024 and the tax is for 2026, so treat the shares as approximate. To see where an individual salary sits among all Canadian earners instead, use the income percentile calculator.

Other “median income” figures you may see

Statistics Canada publishes several medians, and only the adjusted one is used for the band above:

• Median after-tax income of families and unattached individuals: $75,500 in 2024 (Canadian Income Survey, Table 11-10-0190-01). It is not adjusted for household size, so it mixes single people with large families.
• Median total income of individuals aged 15 and over: $44,400 before tax in 2024 (Table 11-10-0238-01, including people with no income). This is one person’s income, not a household’s.

More on these figures is on median income in Canada and average household income in Canada.

How Canada’s middle has changed

In the OECD study, an average of 61% of people in OECD countries lived in middle-income households in the mid-2010s, down from 64% in the mid-1980s. Canada was one of the countries where the size of the middle-income class changed by more than 4.5 percentage points over that period, and among working households the study found “particularly steep declines” of 7 to 8 percentage points in the share in the middle-income band in Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom.

Why the same income feels different by city

The band uses one national median, so it doesn’t change with where you live; living costs do. Housing is one example: the shelter part of Statistics Canada’s poverty-line basket for a family of four is $28,147 a year in Vancouver and $19,562 in Winnipeg (2025). A household in the middle of the band can therefore have very different amounts left after rent or a mortgage. For city and province comparisons, see cost of living by province, average rent in Canada and average household expenses in Canada.

Income is only part of the picture

The OECD band measures one year of income. Two households with the same income can be in very different positions if one owns a home and has savings and the other rents and carries debt. To compare that side, see net worth by age in Canada and average savings by age in Canada; for individual earnings by age, see average income by age in Canada.

Related resources

• Am I considered low income in Canada?
• Average income by age in Canada
• Median income in Canada
• Average salary in Canada
• Cost of living in Canada
• Is $120,000 a good salary?