Rediscovering America’s Working Class
Working class voters sent a wake-up call in this presidential election. Their call was that they were angry and tired of being taken for granted. As a result, the majority of them voted for Donald Trump instead of Kamala Harris.
That call raises the conventional “W” questions of who, what, when, where, why:
- Who is in the working class?
- What are the conditions of the working class?
- When did those conditions start to change?
- Where does the working class live?
- Why did the working class vote for Trump?
The Working Class
There is no universal or single definition of the working class.
Two common elements of many definitions are those “without college degrees” who have “lower incomes.” In general, the members of the working class also tend to be categorized as lower-earning middle class and not those in poverty.
In 2023, Aurelia Glass, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, posted an insightful article on the nature of the working class. The definition she uses is “labor force participants who do not have a four-year college degree.”
In her piece, Glass notes that those participants cover a broad spectrum:
According to data from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS), the current working class largely works in services, particularly retail, health care, food service and accommodation, and building services, though manufacturing and construction remain large employers as well. Black, Hispanic, and other workers of color make up 45 percent of the working class, while non-Hispanic white workers comprise the remaining 55 percent. Nearly half of the working class is women, and 8 percent have disabilities.
She points out that “prior to the 1990’s, the working class constituted more than 90% of the labor force.” In 2021, the working class — those without college degrees — had shrunk to 62%.
According to Glass, the top 5 occupations and industries for the working class, in ranked order, are:
- Occupations: Driver/sales workers and truck drivers; Laborers and freight, stock and materials movers; Janitors and building cleaners; First line supervisors of retail sales workers; Other managers.
- Industries: Construction; Restaurants and other services; General medical and surgical hospitals, and specialty hospitals; Elementary and secondary schools; Supermarkets and other grocery stores.
Conditions Of The Working Class
Even though Glass does not include income in her definition of the working class, she observes:
The jobs held by working-class Americans far too often offer low pay, few protections, and insufficient worker voice on the job. Nonunion construction and manufacturing jobs are often low-paying, while other jobs predominant among members of the working class — including in the service sector, food service, health care, retail, and home care — commonly offer low wages, few benefits, and insufficient worker protections.
Just as there is no definitive definition for working class, there is no nationally accepted definition of the median annual income or income range for those in the working class. The Pew Research Center provides valuable information on those earnings, however, in its report, The State of the American Middle Class, issued in May 2024.
That Pew report indicates the median household income by tier, based upon data from 2022, was:
- Upper Income: $258,920
- Middle Income: $106,092
- Lower Income: $35,318
Based upon those medians, the middle-income household had income ranging from $53,046 to $159,138. The lower income households had incomes less than $53,046.
Pew reports the breakout of those incomes as follows:
- 42% of those households without a high school degree had a middle class income and 54% had a lower income.
- 54% of those households with a high school degree had a middle class income and 37% had a lower income.
- About one-third or more workers in construction, transportation, food preparation and serving, and other services were in the lower income tier. 60% were in the middle income. About 9–10% were upper income.
The Changing Conditions of the Working Class
The Pew report disclosed that over the past half-century, the economic conditions of middle-income and lower income earners who comprise the working class changed fairly dramatically.
It explains:
… the middle class has fallen behind on two key counts. The growth in income for the middle class since 1970 has not kept pace with the growth in income for the upper income tier. And the share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has plunged.
In that same time frame, the share of overall income held by the lower class “edged down from 10% to 8%. That may sound promising but “the share of people living in lower-income households increased over this period.”
These decreases have not been a recent event. Pew advises: “The share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has fallen almost without fail in each decade since 1970.”
Those facts and statistics regarding the decline of the middle-income class and the growth of those in the lower income class are concerning, both for the workers in those classes and those interested in ensuring the American economy is a fair and equitable one.
Even more concerning are the findings from studies done by the RAND Corporation and Economic Policy Institute in 2020. Those studies show that income distribution was relatively equal across all levels of pay before 1974.
Since then, equity has disappeared. The RAND analysis shows that if the distribution had stayed relatively comparable to the post-World War II period in 2018:
- Workers at the 25th percentile would be earning $61,000 instead of $33,000.
- Workers at the 50th percentile would be earning $92,000 instead of $50,000.
- Workers in the top 1 % would be earning $549,000 instead of $1.2 million.
The Economic Policy Institute study reveals that if wages had tracked with hourly productivity, the average American worker would be earning $10 more per hour.
The Locations of the Working Class
Those in the working class live across and throughout the United States. The percentage of working class living in those locations is highly variable.
Richard Fry of Pew Research reports:
Our latest analysis shows that the estimated share of adults who live in middle-income households varies widely across the 254 metropolitan areas we examined, from 42% in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California, to 66% in Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, Washington. The share of adults who live in lower-income households ranges from 16% in Bismarck, North Dakota, to 46% in Laredo, Texas.
It’s not just the percentage of working class who live in metropolitan areas, it’s also where they live in those areas — and whether they can afford to live there.
A study released in 2017, before the inflation of the 2020’s, which drove costs of goods and rentals up considerably, showed that a “typical”
working class family of two adults and two children would not be able to afford to live in most cities in the U.S.
The five most unaffordable cities were: Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston, San Francisco, and New York. A typical family in New York, at that time, would have needed an additional $91,184 per year “just to break even.”
The cost of living in or close to the city has driven more and more of the working class to the suburbs, exurbs, and urban fringe both to live and to work. In 2022, the Urban Institute estimated that “almost 70 percent of metropolitan area workers now live and work in the suburbs.” Those in the working class with lower incomes move to rural areas with access to the urban and suburban areas where they are employed.
In addition to the ten of millions of working-class Americans living in or close to metropolitan areas, there are 10.8 million working class Americans living in rural areas.
According to the American Communities Project, those citizens reside in what they label “Working Class Country.” The Communities Project reports:
- There are 280 working class country counties.
- They are heavily clustered in the eastern half of the United States including Appalachia, the Ozarks, and the upper-Midwest.
- These counties are 76% white.
- They exist primarily as small service economies, with some small manufacturing.
- Their median household income is $51,300.
- 19% have a college degree.
The Working Class for Donald Trump
In 2020, Donald Trump secured 71% of the vote in the 280 counties comprising “working class country.” Statistics on the vote in 2024 are not readily available on the vote in those counties yet. But it can be assumed that he received at least that percentage — and probably more — this year.
This is due the fact that in 2024, Donald Trump won the popular vote and gained ground in counties across the country. In their analysis for the Brookings Institution, Mark Muro and Shriya Methukupally of the Brookings Institution assess the nature of that gain.
At the time of their analysis, Trump had won 2,552 counties and Harris had won 382. Muro and Methukupally point out that the bulk of those counties were “rural and small town communities that mostly vote Republican” Trump had won before.
They highlight, though, that:
… this year’s red wave challenges the boundaries of the nation’s economic divides and has expanded the Republican economic base for the moment. Specifically, 81 of the 82 counties that shifted their party allegiance in 2024 shifted from blue to red.
They go on to note that a “number of these newly red counties are large,” and that of the largest 100 counties in the U.S. by GDP share, the counties won by Trump increased from 5 in 2020 to 17 in 2024.
Those new Trump victory counties included: Maricopa County, Ariz., (home to Phoenix); Orange County, Calif.; Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Tarrant County, Texas (home to Dallas); and Duval County, Fla. (home to Tampa and St. Petersburg).
The working class were undoubtedly major contributors to Trump’s wins in those counties, as well as the other counties that turned red this presidential election cycle. They voted for Trump for a number of reasons. The overriding reason for many was that the prices for most goods and services at the grocery store, gas stations, and other places were far too high.
Reuters states that exit polls show that approximately 56% of voters without college degrees picked Trump, up 6 points from 2020. It also reports that among people without college degrees who are not white, Trump’s share of the vote increased by 8 points.
Trump secured those votes because he heard the voices of the working class and structured his messages for them to hear him. His relentless focus on the substantial rising costs of living for individuals was persuasive. His statements that the economy was much better under him, and that he would make the economy great again, convinced a large and diverse group from the working class to cast their ballots to elect him the 47th president.
Donald Trump for the Working Class
The working class delivered for Donald Trump. The question becomes: will he deliver for the working class.
What his administration does beginning on day one on his presidency and for the next four years will determine the answer to that question. Given Trump’s performance during his tenure as the 45th president, however, it is likely that he may not do much to benefit them.
We took a detailed look at the performance of the economy for the working class and lower income workers in a blog posted in April 2020 — Trump’s fourth year as president. Our summary assessment of that performance is presented below:
In his State Of The Union address on February 4, President Donald Trump declared “Jobs are booming. Incomes are soaring. Poverty is plummeting…I am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is the best that it has ever been.”
We examined that assertion, focusing on the conditions of those in the middle class, blue collar or low wage workers, gig workers, and the poor and concluded:
This definitely cannot be viewed as a boom period for the “typical’ American worker nor can it be labeled a complete bust period. What this period is, for 60% or more of America’s working class — especially those without a high school or college degree — are hard times.
This is due to a number of factors, including enormous inequalities in income distribution in the United States that have grown over time; the average income of low wage workers; deficiencies in the American safety net; and a serious decline in the physical and mental health of Americans without college degrees.
Specific points we made regarding the “hard times” during the Trump years included:
- White males were suffering “deaths of despair” due to factors such as alcoholism, suicide, and drug abuse.
- Although women held 50% of American jobs, the gender pay gap between the earnings of women and men had only shrunk incrementally, and the biggest overall gains for women in employment in 2019 were in low-paying jobs in healthcare and retail.
- In 2018, Black unemployment was at least twice as high as white unemployment nationally, and the Black-white wage gap continued to widen.
- The Hispanic unemployment rate hit a historic low in 2018, but a study showed that in 2017 Hispanic men working full-time made 14.9 percent less in hourly wages than comparable white men, while Hispanic women made 33.1 percent less than comparable white men.
In addition to those problems, based upon an examination of Trump’s proposed budgets from 2018 through 2021, and regulations he attempted to enact through federal agencies, ProPublica found that while Trump was in the White House, “he advanced an agenda across his administration that was designed to cut health care, food and housing programs, and labor protections for poor and working-class Americans.”
The Need for a Working Class Recovery Plan
The past may not be prologue. It’s possible that Trump will put a plan in place and implement it to ensure that the performance of his administration for the working class between 2025 to 2028 will be considerably different and better than it was from 2017 to 2020.
Trump put forward a number of ideas on the campaign trail to improve the economy for the working class such as: eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay; temporarily capping credit card interest rates; lowering the prices of gas and groceries; and replacing Obamacare with a better healthcare plan.
Those are only ideas and promises. They must be converted into a comprehensive and integrated plan that is implemented effectively in order to matter for the working class.
A “concept of a plan” will not suffice. Now that the working class has been rediscovered, it is essential to put a working-class recovery plan in place to address the conditions and inequalities that exist currently.
If the Trump administration does that, the working class will get an appropriate return on the investment they made with their votes in 2024. If it does not, the working class will get a chance to invest their votes differently in 2026 and 2028.
As this blog attests, inequality abounds and the needs of the working class are great. This situation must be addressed to ensure that achieving the American dream is still possible for all Americans regardless of their personal backgrounds or educational levels.
Originally published by the Frank Islam Institute for 21st Century Citizenship. For more information on what 21st century citizenship entails, and to see exemplars from around the world, please visit our website.
