Frequently Asked Questions

How do you define the working class? Is there a fixed definition of working class that can guide reform efforts?

There is no universally agreed-upon definition of the working class. With three exceptions, we define working-class jobs as those belonging to categories 400–900 in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO): clerical support workers, service and sales workers, craft and related trades workers, skilled farm workers, plant and machine operators and assemblers, and elementary occupations.42 The ISCO classification system provides detailed lists of the many specific occupations that fall within these categories.

We make three exceptions to this approach: We do not count as working class (1) police officers (who have historically been treated as a separate category in research on working-class representation, because in the United States most police officers have education and training requirements and stable, salaried positions); (2) farm owners and farm managers (because those positions entail owning or managing commercial enterprises, more like business owners and managers); and (3) sole proprietors or small-business owners in working-class trades (for example, the owners of plumbing companies, because owning a business requires significant training and capital beyond what is required in most working-class jobs).

This definition is consistent with most research to date on the political officeholding among working-class Americans, and it is sufficiently detailed to serve as a basis for evaluating reform efforts and specific candidates.

We strongly recommend that reformers adopt a definition of working class that is rooted in empirical research on working-class officeholding, and we urge reformers to resist the temptation to change the definition of working class to include favored candidates.
 

Why do you define the working class in terms of occupation? What about other definitions that focus on income, education, or the kind of family someone grew up in?

Our definition of the working class focuses on occupations, first, because a person’s occupation is a more plausible basis for the formation of political views and identities than other common measures. There is little evidence, for instance, that simply having money or earning a college degree changes people’s political values; in contrast, the workplace is a site of important professional, personal, and political socialization.43 Research on politicians has found that their past occupations—far more so than traits like income, education, wealth, or the economic status of their parents—are important dividing lines that predict consequential differences in how they behave and the kinds of policies they support.44

Second, although traits like income and education are important (and often highly correlated with occupations), data on income and education can sometimes conflate people with very different experiences and life chances. A person with a college degree earning $40,000 a year could be a Wal-Mart cashier, a public-school teacher, or a Ph.D. student in computer science at an Ivy League university. In most contexts, it would not make much sense to say that these individuals all belong to the same social class.

The third reason we use occupations to define the working class is practical. When studying politicians, it is far easier to obtain information about their past occupations than it is to obtain information about their past income or wealth.

Many studies approach this differently, of course.

• Survey researchers often define the working class using income and education because surveys frequently do not ask about people’s occupations.45 When researchers have the opportunity to collect occupational data, they should do so.
• Some researchers argue for a more expansive definition of the working class, often citing positions like police officer or teacher, jobs that scholars usually do not count because they often require postsecondary degrees and provide far more job security than the jobs labeled “working-class” here.
• Observers often argue that politicians raised by working-class parents should be counted as belonging to or being from the working class.46 However, studies find that a politician’s own occupation is a stronger predictor of their choices in office. Just as a doctor tends to be better suited to perform medicine than the child of a doctor, a worker tends to be better suited than the child of a worker to understand and represent the views of working-class people.
• Politicians are often labeled (or label themselves) “working class” not because of the jobs they held before they held office but on the basis of their mannerisms, their clothing (like Senator John Fetterman’s trademark hoodie), their past experiences of short-term economic adversity, their personal connections to working-class people, their support from working-class voters, and other factors. Each of these practices has some precedent in the larger academic research on social stratification. But these kinds of approaches can be difficult to replicate across different populations of politicians and to measure in the general public.

These are all important considerations, but none of them address the fundamental fact that the people who do essential-but-precarious working-class jobs make up half of our labor force but almost never go on to hold elected office themselves.
 

Are working-class politicians disproportionately male or white?

No. Women and people of color are slightly overrepresented in working-class jobs and among politicians from working-class jobs. There is no evidence that increasing the number of people from working-class jobs who hold office would cause a decline in the representation of women or people of color.47
 

Are people who hold working-class jobs less qualified to be politicians?

There is no widely accepted definition of what it means to be qualified to hold office (beyond meeting basic legal requirements like filing for the election on time and being old enough to serve). When scholars in the United States and in other democracies have attempted to measure qualifications, they have not found large or meaningful differences between people in working-class jobs and others.48 Some studies have also noted that this argument bears an uncomfortable resemblance to historical efforts to disenfranchise marginalized groups.49 At this time, there is no real evidence to suggest that working-class people are less likely to hold office because they are less qualified.
 

Is a college degree required to be a politician?

No. There is no requirement that political candidates must hold a college degree. And there is no reason to think that people without a college degree are any less intelligent.50 Research on politicians shows that those with and without college degrees tend to perform similarly in office.51
 

Is the shortage of politicians from working-class jobs due to the decline of unions, the rising cost of elections, party polarization, or some other recent phenomenon?

No. Broad trends like these may add additional obstacles that discourage working-class people from holding office, but the near absence of politicians from working-class jobs in the United States predates all of these phenomena.52