Voters Define ‘Working Class’ by Workforce Participation, Economic Situation, and Job Type — Not Education

“Working class” is a nebulous term in American politics, a subjective label often defined by academics and pollsters as people without a college degree.

Understanding voters with and without a college degree provides a useful binary for understanding American politics and the way education and social environments shape political views. But it is not a perfect substitute for understanding the “working class” in today’s economy — the percentage of degree-holders in the workforce has grown from 18% to 42% since 1980, while the pay advantage associated with a college degree has declined since 2015. Roughly a third of college graduates, and 42% of recent graduates, are underemployed, meaning they are working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree.

At the same time, a “good life” in the U.S. costs more to buy today, while wages have largely stagnated for middle- and low-income workers.

New polling from Data for Progress finds that voters do not typically define “working class” along educational lines. Instead, voters are more reliant on someone’s level of workforce participation, economic situation, and job type when determining whether or not someone is working class.

In an open-ended question, voters were asked: “In your own words, what does being working class mean to you?”

The majority of the responses fall into three categories: someone’s level of workforce participation, their type of employment, and their income or salary.

The most common response describes someone’s participation in the workforce, like whether they work for a living, whether they need to work to survive, or whether they earn money from their labor instead of their capital, generational wealth, or government assistance. 

Roughly a quarter of respondents cite income levels or someone’s financial circumstance as an indicator of “working class” status, including working paycheck to paycheck or having an income below a certain threshold. 

Respondents are not united in whether “working class” better describes someone at low or middle income. While 11% of respondents say being “working class” is an indicator of low income or struggle, about 7% say being “working class” describes someone in the middle class or someone whose job provides stability.

Additionally, about 14% describe someone’s type of employment as an indication of whether they are “working class.” Respondents in this category most commonly mention blue-collar, manual labor, or service work, but some respondents also mention full-time employment or non-managerial work.