The Middle class of society performs many useful and significant functions in the development of any state. To conduct a balanced socio-economic policy, the state needs to know the social structure of society, including the share of the middle class in the total population, as well as the dynamics of its development. To this end, the paper substantiates the author's criteria for distinguishing the middle class among employees by level of education and professional status. The size of the middle class in Russia is determined for each of the above criteria separately and in their entirety. A comparative analysis of the results obtained is presented, based on which, at the end of the work, directions for increasing the middle class in the country are proposed.