The middle class, as a percentage of households, had declined.
But the trend was also crystal clear. Some middle-classers must have joined the lower or working class (they used to be different things). But a larger percentage of the middle class had moved up the SES scale.
If you look at the lower/working + middle class percentage total, it decreased. In other words, the lowest 2 (or 3) 'classes' became a smaller percentage of the households. For quick one-look graphic as of 2021, here. It's Pew, the actual document that's from is fair.
How did the middle class die? Well, it didn't, but it did lose weight. It's not even near life support, but it sounds outrage-inducing to claim otherwise. (A decade ago a NYT article pushed that button, but the 'infographic' with just the data showed what the Pew link showed--more middle-class households climbed "up" a rung or two than descended a rung or two.)
1. Jobs with scant increases in productivity usually got scant increases in wages, those with larger increases in productivity usually but far from always got larger ones--perhaps the increases were not equal to the productivity increases, but they were usually above inflation (defined the classical way). This is a bit messy to prove and nobody likes hearing it, but looking at that correlation produces similar, if not identical, research results (so, yes, it's been replicated).
2. A lot of two-income families underwent fission to two lower-earning one-income families, and a lot of single parents never got there via marriage to begin with. (That gutted my current neighborhood back in 2010-11, with financial-stress-induced divorces in 2009-10 then foreclosures or near foreclosures in 2010-11.)
3. Two-income families and more than a few one-income families made enough to rise out of the middle class; note that there's a correlation between college degree and two-income households.
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