Ever since Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, pundits and politicians have been trying to figure out why the nation’s working class is moving to the right.
“Donald Trump Wins as Champion of Working-Class Discontent,” Read a headline. “How Donald Trump Gave Democrats the Working-Class Blues,” Read another. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders gave Democrats a scathing postmortem: “It’s not at all surprising that a Democratic Party that has abandoned working class people has abandoned them,” he said. wrote in a statement After the election.
But what often gets lost in this conversation is this simple truth: There is no single neat definition of “working class.” Some analysts focus on one’s education as an indicator of class; Others look at people’s income or jobs. A more traditional definition of “working class” includes both blue- and white-collar workers alike. (Many scholars also tended to wrongly conflate the working class with the white working class when explaining the rise of Trump in 2016.)
The problem with having such a vague – or in some cases broad – definition of “working class” is that talking about working class votes becomes politically meaningless.
According to A recent Pew studyThe majority of Americans consider themselves working class. Many of these people have high incomes: About 60 percent of Republicans in the upper-income bracket (based on family size and cost of living) identify themselves as working class. For Democrats in the same income bracket, 33 percent identified this way.
At a glance, that survey might show people are out of touch with reality: How can people at the top of the income ladder consider themselves working class? But the deeper story is much more complex.
Three incomplete measures of class
So what do analysts mean when they say “working class”? Typically, they implicitly refer to one of three informal metrics: a person’s job, their household income, or their level of education. But each of these measures tells only part of the story.
Take someone’s profession, for example. A common image politicians conjure up when talking about the working class is that of an organized manufacturing workforce. A recent example of this is how President Joe Biden tried to win over working class voters Much talked about Bringing back manufacturing jobs or even joining autoworkers’ strikes — is happening The first president to walk the picket line.
But it no longer captures the image of the working class that many are referring to. For starters, union jobs don’t make up a large portion of the overall labor market. In 2023, 10 percent workers – 14.4 million people – were members of a union, down from 20 percent in 1983. And, because of the bargaining power that unions provide their members, some union jobs can be well-paid. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, union members earn more than their non-union peers, and on average, union household wealth, 1.7 times higher Compared to nonunion families.
Laborers are not tied to any particular industry. As the United States lost manufacturing jobs, it also saw service industry jobs grow Low unionization rates, low pay, and fewer benefitswhich Especially true in areas dominated by women. These jobs are often considered “working class,” despite not being union gigs, due to the lack of economic security that comes with them.
Another frequently used measure of class is income or wealth. We tend to think of people in different income brackets as upper, middle, or lower class, and “working class” is often used as a euphemism for the latter because the term “lower class” has a stigma attached to it. But these are not interchangeable terms.
On the surface, income may seem like the easiest way to understand class divisions, but there is no strict income bracket for any given class because someone’s class varies depending on the size of their family or the cost of living in their area. Generally, someone who lives paycheck to paycheck is seen as working class, while anyone who can save some money and live in relative stability is seen as more middle class.
But someone’s current income or wealth does not necessarily determine their class. “[Class] It has to do with economic security and opportunity,” said Kathryn Kramer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For example, those with a college degree have more job stability and are more likely to earn more money in the future, even if their current income is relatively low. And if two people have the same job and income but have vastly different backgrounds, they probably aren’t in the same class as each other. If one of them comes from a wealthy family and the other grew up in poverty, for example, the former will likely have a bigger safety net than the latter in the event of layoffs.
This leads to another way we define working class: whether or not someone has a college degree. People without college degrees, after all, tend to fill jobs associated with the working class: jobs in manufacturing or service industries.
This is often the default definition in the political conversation because it is so easy to measure in elections. When analysts write about Trump’s gains among the working class, They are often mentioned for its support among non-college-educated voters. (Approx 62 percent Americans do not have a college degree.)
But the problem with this definition is that education does not always determine one’s economic status. Adjunct professors are a good example. Although adjunct professors are generally seen as part of the elite rather than the working class, they are often poorly paid. A survey found that nearly a quarter of associate professors Earn less than $25,000 a year.
Working in university have been united There is precisely one reason Growing discontent How they are treated in the workplace with low wages and minimal benefits or job security. But people with bachelor’s degrees who Overwhelming democracy voteswere not generally seen as part of the “working-class vote”, even if they experienced the precarious economic conditions of working-class life.
What does “working class” really mean?
one Marxist scholarMichael Zweig, professor emeritus of economics and founding director of the Center for the Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Put it this way: “Being in the working class means being in a place of relative weakness—in jobs, in the market, in politics, and in culture. At work, most workers have little control over the pace and content of their work. They show up, a supervisor shows them their work, and they do it. JOB Be it skilled or unskilled, white collar or blue collar, in any of thousands of occupations.
According to Zweig’s measure, the majority of the American labor force – A solid 62 percentHe said — part of the working class.
But as much as we try to define class in strict terms, the reality is that it is more complex than a person’s job, education level, or income. Finally, understanding a person’s class requires considering how they feel about their position in society.
“How we form our ideas about who we are in the world in terms of our economic experience is related to who we are in the political world and our connection to government.” “For example, if we feel that way in our jobs, if we have very little control and very little that tells us we are respected, that translates to how we see ourselves in relationships with other institutions of power, like governments.”
There is also a cultural component to the working class, informed by people’s family history. Sherry Lincoln, a professor of English and American studies at Georgetown University, gives the example of someone who can remember how their grandfather lost his job at the steel mill, how their father worked at an auto plant that later closed, and how they are now unsure if they will provide a secure future. Can depend on someone for.
“I think a lot of the economic anxiety that we’ve seen this year, for example, it’s led a lot of people to say, ‘I trust Trump more than I trust Harris to fix the economy,’ about previous rounds of bad times and certain policies.” And about the long-term history of what the practices have done,” Lincoln said. “So I think part of the insecurity that people feel is not necessarily — as many pundits have said in the last month or so — just about egg prices,” Lincoln added. did
“Working class” is a useful but overused term
As the gig economy grows in the United States, with more and more people working as contractors or freelancers instead of full-time employees with benefits, people who work in completely different fields or have completely different educational backgrounds are beginning to experience the same situation: lack of job security, Employee benefits, or a lot of control in the workplace.
“That’s part of why I still love the word [working class] What I think we need to do is remind people of this collective feeling and people who identify as workers and see themselves as somehow united, like against managers or owners,” said Jennifer Silva, Indiana University public affairs professor. Those who study the working class. In this context, the term is useful for organizing workers around things like better working conditions, regardless of their politics at the individual level.
Nevertheless, “working class” is often overused, especially in political contexts. Given how broad and murky the definition of the term can be, and how many Americans identify as working class, speaking of a so-called working-class vote is perhaps not so enlightening.
On the other hand, focusing on the details of voters’ backgrounds may be more helpful in breaking down the weaknesses of Democrats and Republicans in their coalitions. D right shift For example, voters without a college degree have been significant over the past few decades. How do you see Trump? It seems to have paid off Democrats should be thinking among low-income voters, who are Voters in lower income brackets have historically been won over. But these data points are particularly about voters without college degrees and low-income voters, not a broader story about the working class.
This does not mean that there is no such thing as working class or that a person’s class does not affect the way they vote. Class politics is still a powerful force that helps influence elections. Law enforcement campaigns, for example, focus their ire on crimes associated with people in poverty rather than white-collar criminals. and anti-establishment propaganda Capitalizes on people’s discontent the elites
But when the definition of working class is so loose and means different things in different contexts, it doesn’t help us better understand how class is shaping partisan politics in America. As the Pew poll suggests, if a majority of high-income Republicans identify as working class, their voting patterns tell us nothing about how poor or low-income people feel.
That’s why when analyzing election data, it’s best to stick to terms that better characterize someone’s socioeconomic status: How do poor people vote compared to rich people? How did lower-middle-class people vote compared to upper-middle-class people? Why is the party gap between college and non-college voters increasing?
All of this would explain the role of class in North American politics much better than a word whose definition no one can agree on.
