What Does the Working Class Look Like?
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Way too often in American political rhetoric, the working class means “white people.” That’s especially true among pundits who often talk of politicians needing to appeal to “the working class,” i.e., laid off white autoworkers in Michigan with out of fashion mustaches. African-American and Latino issues are seen as completely separate. They are discussed as a different demographic and the discussion of political appeals are different in ways that equate wealthy and poor minority populations as having the same interests, which is sometimes true and sometimes not. But what does the actual working class look like? Increasingly, it is made up of people of color and they will make up a majority of the working class sooner than you think, as this new Economic Policy Institute report details.
What this report finds: People of color will become a majority of the American working class in 2032. This estimate, based on long-term labor force projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and trends in college completion by race and ethnicity, is 11 years sooner than the Census Bureau projection for the overall U.S. population, which becomes “majority-minority” in 2043.
Why this matters: As of 2013, the working class—made up of working people without a college degree—constitutes nearly two-thirds (66.1 percent) of the U.S. civilian labor force between ages 18 and 64. Thus wage stagnation and economic inequality can’t be solved without policies aimed at raising living standards for the working class. Because the working class is increasingly people of color, raising working class living standards will require bridging racial and ethnic divides.
What it means for policy: The best way to advance policies to raise living standards for working people is for diverse groups to recognize that they share more in common than not, and work together toward:
Full employment
Equal pay for equal work
Universal high-quality child care and early childhood education
Strengthened collective bargaining
Higher minimum wages
Voting rights protections
Reforms to immigration and criminal justice systems
This also means we need to change how we talk about the working class immediately.