The Middle Class In Canada Is Now Doing Better Than The Middle Class In AmericaMichael Snyder The era of the great U.S. middle class is rapidly coming to a bitter end. In recent years, I have been up to Canada frequently, and I am always amazed at how much nicer things are up there. The stores and streets are cleaner, the people are more polite and it seems like almost everyone that wants to work has a job. But despite knowing all this, I was still surprised when the New York Times reported this week that middle class incomes in Canada have now surpassed middle class incomes in the United States And things are particularly dire for those in the U.S. on the low end of the scale The biggest reason for this is the lack of middle class jobs. Millions of good jobs have been shipped overseas, and millions of other good jobs have been replaced by technology. The value of our labor is declining with each passing day, and this has forced millions upon millions of very qualified Americans to take whatever they can get. As NBC News recently noted, this is a big reason why the temp industry has been booming It has been estimated that one out of every ten jobs is now filled by a temp agency. I have worked for temp agencies myself in the past. Big companies like the idea of having disposable workers, and this is a trend that is likely to only grow in the years ahead. But temp jobs and part-time jobs dont pay as well as normal jobs. And those kinds of jobs generally cannot support middle class families. At this point, nine out of the top ten occupations in the United States pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year. That is absolutely stunning. These days most families are barely scraping by, and they dont have much extra money to go shopping with. This is a big reason for the retail apocalypse that we are now witnessing. This week we learned that retail stores in the United States are closing at the fastest pace that we have seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But you wont hear much about that on the mainstream news. You can find lots of space available signs and empty buildings in formerly middle class neighborhoods all over the country. For example, one of my readers recently shot the following YouTube video in Scottsdale, Arizona. As you can see, empty commercial buildings are all over the place As the middle class shrinks, more families are being forced to take in family members that cant find decent work. I have written previously about the huge rise in the number of young adults that are moving back in with their parents. But this is not just happening to young people. As the Los Angeles Times recently detailed, the number of Americans 50 and older that are moving in with their parents has absolutely soared in recent years The U.S. economy is slowly but steadily falling apart, and more people fall out of the middle class every single day. A recent Gallup survey found that 14 percent of all Americans would experience significant financial hardship within one week of a job loss. An additional 29 percent of all Americans would experience significant financial hardship within one month of a job loss. That means that 43 percent of the entire country is living right on the edge. It is no wonder why only about 30 percent of all Americans believe that we are moving in the right direction as a nation. Most people know deep down that something is seriously wrong. But most people cant explain exactly what that is or how to fix it. Meanwhile, the politicians and the media keep telling us that if we just keep doing the same old things that everything will work out okay somehow. The blind are leading the blind, and we are rapidly marching toward disaster. This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here. 