"Working Class" Definition

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Hi yall,
I grew up in a upper-middle to lower-upper household.My dad grew up working class.I worked in a working class job after college despite having multiple degrees because I could not get a professional job.It was in the trucking industry.I was not a driver though.Also my undergraduate major was sociology and I was taught a lot about Marxist theory.The head professor of the department taught us that the proletariat is the working class

People who trade time for money at jobs that work for the capitalist class.What is your definition of "working class"?I heard it described as blue collar jobs that are not meant for college grads?I hear politicians use the term "working families" but I dont know exactly what that means.Does that mean people who work but dont have degrees.The working class in American used to be in a lot better shape than it is now.I feel like we need strong labor unions again just so the American people can live the American Dream.

I grew up in the middle class. I am downwardly mobile. I am unskilled labor. I read or someone told me that for the professional worker there's not enough hours in the day to get their job done. For the blue collar worker, time slows and it is very tedious. I think there are many definitions for working class.
I believe "working families" is code for "not on welfare" . A politician couldn't get enough votes campaigning on helping the poor.
I agree that we need unions. I think we need regulations and boundaries to eliminate grinding poverty.

I've always thought of it as anyone earning a wage or salary

It is one of those things it depends on who you ask.

To me it is someone who earns less than the average salary.

They are often paid a regular hourly wage.

They often do manual labor.

They often are not college graduates.

The last three are not hard and fast rules. For example a secretary may earn a yearly salary but still receive poor wages. Contract work(gig economy) can be very lucrative yet they are often paid by the hour and need an advanced degree for certain assignments.

I'm used to working class implying working jobs that aren't considered skilled labour, aren't a form of management and that don't require post-secondary. (Roughly agreeing with ASPartOfMe's definition). Unskilled labour is one of the more common sources of income, at least traditionally.

Historically 'working class' and 'middle class' aren't the same but the boundaries got fuzzier after WWII because a lot of labourers saw increases in living standards and wages.

I'd generally consider skilled labour, management and most jobs that require college to be middle class. My understanding is that historically all sorts of professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc) would be considered middle class, whereas upper class implied one made their living primarily through ownership of land, factories or similar.

For some reason pink-collar workers often aren't seen as 'true working class' even if a lot of those jobs are equally hard and often similarly compensated.

Well, "working class" is a reductionist construct, hard to define precisely, hard to decide where the boundary is between it and the "middle class." There are many criteria, and they don't always match up. Income, capital, disposable assets, acceptance in various social circles, how many people you push around at work. But without the concept of social class, it would be harder to think and communicate clearly about class struggle, the war between Labour and Capital. Not that I'm a Marxist, I just find some Marxist thought to be useful in figuring out what's going on in the world.

Me, I'm something of a mixture of working class and middle class, but mostly working class. I used to sell my labour power to an employer and was probably exploited to a degree, though as I was seen as a "skilled" worker so I probably wasn't ripped off to the degree that a so-called "unskilled" labourer is. Last time I looked, I was receiving roughly the national modal wage. It was never clear to me whether I was viewed as blue-collar or white-collar. There was some pressure on me at work to do menial stuff, but the place wasn't strongly managed and I was reasonably successful in resisting that downward pressure on my professional effectiveness. And the people higher up in the food chain there tended to treat me like more of an equal.

There's also a sociological element to class identity. Don't know where I fit there. I get on with the middle class and the upper end of the working class quite well as a rule, and I have the extended vocabulary. I do have a certain disdain for the proletariat, but only as a breed, not as individuals. I'm surprisingly comfortable with certain down-at-heel individuals and have been known to find their simple communication style a refreshing change from the over-complicated bollocks that their "superiors" tend to spout. Ultimately I suppose if I'm anything, I'm at the arse end of the middle class.

But really it's all too complicated for me to define class or my position in it. All I know for sure is that I yam what I yam. I can tell the difference between Zuckerberg and the poor sod who struggles to make ends meet with the basic necessities of life, and I wish things were more even.