Who really counts as ‘working class’?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I think that's truly at the heart of what it means to be working class is that there's this tone that we can't really put our finger on that somehow you are being left behind or somehow you are being left out of power or excess or success or something.
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. The working class. It's a term we hear a lot, but do we actually know what it means? Does it mean working in manufacturing, not having a college degree, or is it the same thing as blue-collar work? In the run-up to the midterms, politicians are touting their plans to help the working class, begging the question, who exactly are they talking to? To help us understand who's a part of the working class, we're talking with Katherine Ann Edwards, labor economist and host of the Optimist Economy podcast, to learn more. Catherine, welcome to It's Been a Minute.
Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh. So happy to have you. I've been watching your videos for forever, as I was telling you before we started recording. And I, yeah, I just appreciate the way that you think about the economy and economics. And it's, I'm just thrilled that you're here with us. We are going to talk about the working class today. Let's
do
it. Which like a definition, I feel like, it's pretty elastic is I guess I would put it. Um, there are so many different ways that people use it. Um, and it can be so many different things, but first, uh, what is the textbook definition of working class?
I don't know. I don't know if there is one is probably the best answer because it's a, it's a fungible, very much reflective of, of what society is putting onto its workforce. Um, So the origins of working class come from the Industrial Revolution, like go way, way back, early 1800s in England. And it's this separation between people and land and ownership, where I work a plot of land that I own, and I'm a subsistence farmer, or I work a plot of land that I rent, but we've worked it for forever. The idea of a working class is that you have people who are laboring but own nothing. And this comes out of the Industrial Revolution and the mass employment of people in things like factories. This kind of idea of working class, of working but not owning, carries through the 19th century.
What does “working class” actually mean and how is it defined?
It's featured heavily in the Communist Manifesto and the works of Marx and Engels. They talk a lot about the working class. But in the U.S. context... especially in the 20th century, we've always talked about the working class as a function of education and income. And so this economic notion of do you work and not own is the kind of premise behind the idea of having a working class. But in our context, we tend to say it's This divide between going to college and not going to college and making a lot of money and not making a lot of money and not making
a lot of
money. And you end up with working class being we almost always refer to it as being a high school educated but not college educated person. We tend to think of it as someone who makes less wages as opposed to higher wages. But even then, it's still very fungible.
When politicians use the term working class. who are they referring to? Like who are we meant to picture when we hear that term working class?
Unclear. I think that it's, it's leaving room for you to fill in the blanks. And that's why it's such, I think that's one reason why it's so commonly used. You know, I'm sure that you've heard some type of, and your listeners as well have heard some type of statistic. Like if you ask the average American, whether or not they're middle class, you know, 90% of people will say yes.
And
we have a self-identification that comes from middle class. And when politicians use middle class, the fact that they say that and, and, you know, 90% of Americans will think that they're talking about me is this way to, you know, have some degree of interpretation reflection that comes from the person of what do I identify as?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:46
2
What does “working class” actually mean and how is it defined?
2:46–11:53
3
How did the historical origins of the working class shape its modern meaning?
11:53–19:28
4
Why do politicians often equate the working class with white, non‑college‑educated men?
19:28–27:20
5
How do market failures in health care and childcare affect the working class?
27:20–43:53