.... the Pew survey suggests potential dangers ahead.

The poll asked whether Americans need certain things to be considered middle class. Forty-five percent of respondents said it is necessary to own a home, 37 percent said you must have a college education, 66 percent said you need health insurance -- the most recent focus of expansive public policy. A whopping 86 percent said you have to have “a secure job.”

Not “steady work” or “a reliable income” but “a secure job.”

Working for a living has long defined the middle class, as opposed to rentier aristocrats or the dole-dependent or profoundly insecure poor. But a lot of other assumptions are baked into the term “secure job.” It seems to exclude from the middle class everyone who doesn’t draw a regular paycheck from a single organization -- the self-employed (about 11 percent of the workforce), the retired, housewives, students -- as well as employees on limited-term contracts. As a self-employed writer who doesn’t have “a job,” let alone a secure one, I found the word choice striking.