Reply #73: Working class? It depends on several factors:

[LWolf]

Social class
Ed level
Amount earned
Amount worked
Generation discussed

And probably more.

For my parent's generation, I think "working class" referred to blue-collar workers. My absent, rarely met father was a truck driver. My mom was a secretary. My father's education stopped at 8th grade and my mom graduated from high school. She re-entered a community college to earn an AA when I graduated from high school.

Me? I'm a teacher. You'd call me a professional, I still consider myself working class. First of all, I don't make much money. After 15 years, I make less than my son does, and he didn't go beyond his AA in college. He's working class, too; dependent on the company that employs him, rents his living space.

Secondly, I still think like someone who has experienced paychecks stretched to the regular peanut butter, soup, and macaroni diet; someone who has been homeless, has dealt with how to get to work when the car is broken and there is no money to fix it, someone who has lived week to week on a paycheck, barely scraping by.

There is an interesting book out there for people like me: "Blue Collar, White Limbo." It explores the unusual situation we find ourselves, not fitting in with our blue-collar beginnings or our white collar present.

These days, you can be a college graduate and be "working class." Many college grads can't find employment in their field of study and take low-paid, lower skill jobs. Or they take them as second jobs, since the jobs they get don't pay well, especially with the mammoth burden of student loans to bear.

In my profession, if you really want to be "middle class," you have to be married and have 2 incomes. If you are single, and have no assets outside your income, you probably make less money than your plumber, electrician, or mechanic. I suspect this is true for other "professions" as well.

Skilled trades? They require some level of training, and make decent money. Are they still working class?

I don't really think there is a clear cut answer.