In last week's midterms, the top issue for most Americans was how unaffordable life in America has become. In the NBC News Exit Poll, 88% of voters said they were worried about grocery prices, and 44% said their finances were worse than two years ago.

For the top 10%, the story is different. They're traveling more than ever, and they're directing the focus and future of the travel industry. Bank of America's card data shows higher-income households spent more on travel this year while lower-income households cut back. And for the second quarter in a row, Delta made more from premium seats than from its main cabin: $6.82 billion to $6.80 billion.

Economists have called this a K-shaped economy since 2020: one group's finances go up while the other's go down. Here's how it happened, and how nearly every company that sells a trip has rebuilt around it.

In the spring of 2020, stocks fell about a third in a month, and by August they were back at a record. People who could work from home kept their jobs, and their retirement accounts recovered with the market. People who worked in restaurants, hotels and stores lost their jobs and had no accounts to recover.

Most of the gains at the top since then came from owning stocks and homes, not from raises. The top 10% of American households own about 87% of the stocks and funds that households hold, according to the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 has more than tripled since its 2020 low, and nearly all of that went to people who already had money invested. Many of the same people had bought or refinanced their homes when mortgage rates were near 3%. Their houses were worth a lot more, and their payments didn't change.

Moody's estimates the top 10% of earners now do about half of all consumer spending.

Normally, people with more money buy a bigger house or more expensive things. In 2022, the Fed started raising rates, and mortgage rates went from under 3% to over 7% by that fall. Almost nobody with a 3% mortgage wanted to sell. Americans bought 4.06 million existing homes in 2024, the fewest since 1995, and about the same in 2025. People who don't move also don't spend on renovations and furniture, so that money stayed in their accounts.

Luxury goods hit a different limit. The big fashion brands raised prices again and again after 2020. Chanel's medium classic flap bag cost $5,800 in 2019 and $11,300 in 2025. Eventually buyers stopped going along. Bain found that personal luxury sales fell in 2024 and again in 2025, while in the same research luxury hospitality kept growing.

Many people at the top spent the money on trips instead, though travel as a whole didn't grow much. Total US travel spending rose only about 9% from 2022 to 2025, according to the U.S. Travel Association, less than inflation. Over the same years, Delta's premium ticket revenue grew 45%.

Airlines went after that money first. They had spent the 2010s learning to charge for bags, seats and extra legroom, and they started pricing first class for people who used to sit behind it. In 2011, Delta sold about 14% of its domestic first-class seats. By 2024, it sold 88%. Most of the rest used to go to frequent flyers as free upgrades.

The card companies came next. A premium card was the easiest way to get lounge access, hotel credits and upgrades, and more people wanted them. Last year the Chase Sapphire Reserve went from $550 to $795 and the Amex Platinum went from $695 to $895, and cardholders kept paying. American Express paid Delta $8.2 billion last year for SkyMiles, as I wrote in the status piece.

All those cards put a lot more people in the same lounges, and the lounges got crowded. Then the airlines and card companies made access more expensive. Delta limited Sky Club visits for Amex cardholders. Capital One now charges $45 per guest unless you spend $75,000 a year. American is nearly doubling the price of an Admirals Club membership. The best lounges, like Delta One and Polaris, now come with a business-class ticket rather than a card.

Soho House had a waitlist of more than 100,000 people, and in 2024 it stopped taking new members in New York, London and LA because the houses were too full. At the most popular restaurants, the hard part was getting a reservation, and American Express bought into that too. It already owned Resy, and in 2024 it bought Tock for $400 million to give its best cardholders reservations the public can't book.

Travel agents came back for the biggest trips. The internet replaced them for simple bookings, but on a $40,000 trip, many people still want someone who knows the hotels and can get upgrades. Virtuoso, the luxury agency network, expects US sales to grow about 21% this year.

Hotel brands started building ships. Four Seasons put its first yacht into service this year, with suites from about $20,000 to $350,000 a voyage. Aman, Orient Express and Ritz-Carlton have ships too, though they haven't all filled. Ritz-Carlton's yachts were 51% full in the second quarter, and the Financial Times reported a target of 80 to 85%. The big cruise lines took a cheaper route and built suite areas with their own pools and restaurants on their largest ships.

In May, Spirit shut down. It had been the clearest bet on travelers who wanted the cheapest possible seat, and those travelers were the ones getting squeezed. Ed Bastian said Spirit failed because of its product. Frontier is now adding first-class seats, and Southwest ended open seating, according to eMarketer.

United is going further. In September I wrote about United's new 787, with 30 more premium seats and 65 fewer economy seats than the old layout.

Hotels split the same way. In the first half of this year, luxury hotels grew revenue per available room about 16%, while economy hotels fell 2.7%. Economy hotels filled more rooms than any other tier, but only by cutting rates about 9%. Their guests were still traveling, but they couldn't pay more.

At restaurants, Black Box Intelligence found the strongest sales this year at fast food on one end and fine dining on the other. McDonald's is betting on a $3 menu to bring back lower-income customers, and a midpriced owner in Las Vegas told a reporter he can sell his cheapest and most expensive dishes but not much in between.

I think the middle keeps shrinking. Midscale hotels, midpriced restaurants and plain economy seats are stuck between customers who want to spend more and customers who can't. Southwest is moving up, Spirit already closed, and I expect more midpriced travel businesses to go one way or the other.

I also think a lot of this depends on the stock market. Much of the spending at the top comes from gains in portfolios and home values, and premium travel falls hardest when those drop. In December 2008, international premium traffic was down 13.3% from a year earlier, while economy was down 5.3%, according to IATA. Airlines are now building bigger premium cabins into planes they'll fly for 20 years. If the market drops hard, those cabins will be much harder to fill.