THE Philippines’ most forgotten majority is the middle class. They pay full taxes, get no ayuda and are one medical emergency away from poverty. Welcome to life in the Philippine middle class, the country’s most productive, most taken-for-granted and most quietly suffering segment of society. Under the Marcos Jr. administration, the middle class has become a political afterthought dressed up in optimistic statistics.
The numbers, at first glance, sound promising. Roughly 40 percent of Filipinos now belong to middle-income households, earning between P25,000 and P145,000 a month, up from just 28.5 percent in 1991. Unemployment hit record lows in 2024. Inflation has been tamed. The government is breathlessly close to upper-middle-income country status, missing the World Bank threshold by a mere $26 in gross national income per capita. Twenty-six dollars! The Marcos administration would have you believe this is a triumph. It is not because they are to be blamed for that near but far away state because of corruption to the tune of P1.5-P1.9 trillion for the past three years and the maleta operation of P805 billion on corruption from the expenditure side.
Behind the macro headline is a middle class being quietly squeezed from every direction. Stagnant real wages. A tax system that hammers salaried workers while letting the wealthy minimize their burden through capital gains, holding companies and legal loopholes. A social protection net riddled with gaps because government aid is reserved for the poor, while the rich can take care of themselves. The middle class falls in between, too comfortable for ayuda, too exposed to survive a serious crisis. Economists call it the “new poor” phenomenon. Millions of Filipinos live it every day.
The Covid-19 pandemic laid bare just how fragile this group is. The pandemic knocked the middle-class share of the population from an estimated 43.5 percent in 2018 back down to 39.8 percent by 2021, nearly 4 percentage points erased in three years. The recovery has been uneven and incomplete. Meanwhile, the top 50 wealthiest Filipinos grew their combined wealth by 6 percent in 2024 even as real wages stagnated. The Marcos administration’s own Commission on Audit flagged P331 billion in questionable disbursements between 2022 and 2024. Infrastructure funds were siphoned off, patronage networks entrenched. This is not a government fighting for the middle class. It is a government that expects the middle class to keep funding everyone else.
None of this is inevitable. There is a clear and credible road map for what needs to happen. The World Bank’s 2025 Growth and Jobs Report for the Philippines identifies reforms that, if implemented, could boost annual gross domestic product growth to 6.8 percent, create over 5.1 million better-paying jobs and raise real wages by nearly 13 percent by 2040. The Philippine Institute for Development Studies has been equally direct: a multipronged approach encompassing job quality, tax equity, social protection and governance reform is the only workable path to a genuine middle-class society by 2040.
The prescriptions are not mysterious. Reform the tax system so that capital gains, dividends and investment income face rates comparable to wage income and reduce the burden on salaried workers who currently bear a disproportionate share. Build social insurance that actually covers the middle class, unemployment benefits, portable health coverage and housing finance that does not require a government connection to access. Invest in education and skills that match the needs of a modern economy, not just enrollment numbers. Break up monopolies in telecommunications, energy and transport that keep prices high and productivity low. Open the economy more aggressively to trade and foreign investment in tradable sectors where higher wages are created.
Critically, growth must spread beyond Metro Manila. Regional gaps remain vast. The World Bank has specifically urged the Philippines to harness urban corridors outside the capital as engines of job creation, so that the fruits of growth are not permanently concentrated in one congested metropolitan area. Decentralizing opportunity is not charity, it is strategy.
And underlying all of it is governance. Corruption does not merely offend moral sensibilities. It steals directly from the middle class — diverting public resources away from the schools, hospitals, roads and transit systems that middle-income families depend on most. Every peso lost to a ghost infrastructure project is a peso not invested in the human capital that could lift more Filipinos into stable, secure, productive lives.
The middle class is the bedrock of democracy and political stability, economic growth, tax revenue and public finance, social mobility, innovation, and entrepreneurship and social cohesion. It is the bedrock of AmBisyon Natin 2040. Imagine the waste of the Marcos Jr. term? The middle class cannot dream of better things because of what happened from 2022-2028, a sad story of why we are where we are now.
The Philippines has a bold long-term vision: a predominantly middle-class society, free of poverty, by 2040. AmBisyon Natin 2040 is not mere aspiration — it is a commitment that requires political will to honor. The Marcos administration has, at best, 27 months left to show that will. The macro numbers must translate into lived reality: a teacher in Cebu who can afford a home loan; a nurse in Davao who can cover her family’s hospital bill without going into debt; a young engineer in Iloilo who does not need to leave the country to earn a decent wage.
The middle class does not ask for handouts. It asks for fairness: fair taxes, fair wages, fair access to services and a government that spends its money honestly. That is not too much to demand. And if the current administration cannot deliver it, the Philippine middle class, growing, educated and increasingly politically aware — will eventually find leaders who will.
