Big Take Sep 17, 2026 18m 8m saved
With Joan C. Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco and author of "Outclassed" · Allison Schrager, Bloomberg Opinion columnist · Bertha Bradley, a retired fast-food and home health care worker who organizes with the Union of Southern Service Workers
About 60% of Americans now tell Pew they are working class. That is roughly the share of the adult population holding a job of any kind, which is Allison Schrager's point about what the phrase has come to cover.
For most of a century the term described factory work, union membership and not much education. Pew's latest reading has half of Americans with college degrees and half of upper-income Americans claiming it too.
"The term has less meaning, and that might not be a bad thing. The labor force is very different."
Schrager wrote the Bloomberg Opinion column "Nobody Knows What Working Class Even Means Anymore." Joan C. Williams wrote "Outclassed" and, with Jared Abbott, the voter study most of the numbers here come from. Bertha Bradley worked fast food for 30 years and did 20 of those years as a home health care worker at the same time.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 18 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
60% of Americans told Pew they consider themselves working class, up six percentage points from 2024
Half of Americans with college degrees and half of upper-income Americans said it too
Affordable basics were the number one concern of both groups, and the study found little else in common
10 of 12 top working-class priorities are economic, while college graduates' top priorities are largely cultural
College graduates care about prices; non-college voters care about prices and wages together
60% of 2024 voters lacked a college degree, which Williams says makes a graduates-only coalition arithmetically impossible
Trump's hold on working class voters of color has sharply eroded, on Williams's reading
Socialism polls better than capitalism among Americans under 30, and so do free markets
1. What Mama Cookie Means
The episode opens on Bertha Bradley, 67, of Durham, North Carolina, who goes by Mama Cookie after a nickname her grandmother gave her. She spent three decades in fast food and two of those decades doubling as a home health care worker. She retired three years ago and now organizes with the Union of Southern Service Workers on wages.
Her definition is about money coming in, not about job type or schooling. She traced it back through her grandparents and landed on the federal minimum wage, which has not moved in 17 years.
"I'm a working class person that's not making enough money, that never made enough money to do anything to help me. Just enough to get by." — Bertha Bradley
"Working class is when you're sitting there and the federal government is still sitting at $7.25 an hour." — Bertha Bradley
"Working class is people that are struggling every day." — Bertha Bradley
2. The Pew Identity Shift
The host laid out the survey behind the episode. More Americans consider themselves working class this year than last. Middle-income Americans, Americans without a college degree and blue-collar workers were the likeliest to say it, which is what anyone would expect. The part that is not expected is that half of Americans with college degrees and half of upper-income Americans said it as well.
Schrager treats the drift as a reason to retire the category rather than to police it. She pointed to the size of the change in the labor force and to artificial intelligence, whose effects she said nobody yet knows, and argued that a definition written in the 1800s is not doing useful work now.
"So maybe these definitions from the 19th century don't really serve us anyway." — Allison Schrager
3. Where the Term Came From
Asked when the idea appeared in America and who it was invented to describe, Schrager went back to early industry: people who worked physically hard, had little schooling, had little political representation, and often did not live long because of the work. In the 20th century the same group organized and gained power, and the phrase picked up a second meaning on top of the economic one.
The cultural version of the label came loose from the income it was supposed to describe. Her example was Joe the Plumber, the figure who ran through campaign messaging two decades ago.
"There became this sort of political resonance of the working man, someone who worked with their hands, maybe, you know, was part of a union." — Allison Schrager
"I mean, a lot of plumbers aren't middle class. A lot of them earn actually quite a lot of money. But there's this image of them being working class." — Allison Schrager
4. Six Points Up From 2024
Schrager cited the Pew figure directly and drew the conclusion that makes it awkward. If 60% of Americans identify as working class, the label now covers about everyone who draws a paycheck.
The host noted the figure is six percentage points higher than in 2024. Schrager's explanation was that the word itself has changed register. She recalled a failed attempt to unionize graduate students when she was one, and said organizing among knowledge workers has since succeeded where it did not then.
"I was just reading before here, Pew did a study where 60 percent of Americans consider themselves working class, which would suggest anyone who has a paycheck because like that's the percentage of people who are in the labor force." — Allison Schrager
5. The Service Sector Case
Schrager separated the cultural claim from the one she thinks holds up. Set aside physical labor and use financial uncertainty and demanding work as the test, she said, and the group that fits is service workers, which is the part of the economy that keeps growing.
"It would be service sector jobs. That is a very growing share of our economy. And I think they legitimately could be called working class." — Allison Schrager
6. The College Degree Flip
Joan C. Williams came at the same shift from the political side. Her opening claim is that inequality has widened far enough that graduates in their twenties cannot find stable work and graduates in their thirties cannot pay for houses or childcare.
Pew research shows that just before Obama's election, voters with college degrees leaned Republican. That has reversed completely: Democrats now hold the advantage among graduates, and as of 2024 Republicans held a six-point advantage among voters without a four-year degree. Williams reads the squeeze on younger graduates as a political opening for Democrats, and then immediately warns against the conclusion most people draw from it.
"The fact is that economic inequality has now gotten so bad that even younger college grads can't find a stable job in their 20s, often, and can't afford houses or childcare in their 30s." — Joan C. Williams
"That's the bad news economically. That's actually the good news politically." — Joan C. Williams
"60% of voters in 2024 lacked college degrees, and you can't win an election if you really cannot make progress with 60% of voters." — Joan C. Williams
7. 10 of 12 Priorities
The host pushed back: if both groups want things to cost less, is affordability not one message that reaches everybody? Williams agreed on the headline and then took it apart using the study she and Jared Abbott published, which defined the working class as middle-income voters without college degrees and compared them with Democratic-leaning graduates in the top quarter of incomes.
Affordable basics ranked first for both groups, and the overlap mostly stopped there. Ten of the working class's top twelve priorities were economic. Graduates' top priorities included defense of democracy and culture-war issues. Within economics the two groups were not asking the same question either: graduates listed prices only, while non-college voters listed wages and opportunity alongside prices.
"And we did find that affordable basics were the number one concern of both college-educated voters and non-college-educated voters." — Joan C. Williams
"For example, 10 out of 12 of the top working class priorities are economic, and that's not true for college grads. A lot of their highest priorities are cultural." — Joan C. Williams
"So although college grads are focused solely on the price side of the affordability equation, non-college voters are also focused on the wages side." — Joan C. Williams
"And if Democrats can position themselves as being the party to insist that hard work should yield a stable life, that's a very, very compelling message." — Joan C. Williams
8. Why Republicans Struggle
Asked how Republicans are adapting, Williams gave them credit for a long record of cultural fluency with voters in the middle, and said Trump in particular has had it. Her argument is that he has stopped using it. She cited his own line about not caring about affordability, a second term that has not been built around a stable floor for workers, prices that have gone up and a harder time for farmers.
The erosion she described is sharpest among Latino voters who are citizens and are being detained on the street, and she said it is now showing up among white working class voters as well.
"Well, Republicans are struggling." — Joan C. Williams
"Trump's hold on working class voters of color, particularly Latinos, has really, really sharply eroded." — Joan C. Williams
"And he hasn't done the things that he promised to do to help working class voters." — Joan C. Williams, on why Republicans are losing ground
9. The Mamdani Coalition
The host raised Democratic Socialists of America candidates, who have won primaries in Michigan, Florida and New York. Williams said the profile of a self-described socialist is the younger graduate, and that what the word means to Americans is scrambled, since the same cohort also likes free markets.
Her account of the mechanism is that blue-collar workers who did everything right and still could not get a stable job went to the far right a generation or two ago, and the same experience is now reaching more privileged workers, who go the other way.
The prize she names is a coalition of working class voters and younger graduates, and the risk she names is that graduates' own economic trouble becomes a reason to skip the cultural work. She said the differences between middle-status non-college voters and college-educated liberals are large, and that Democrats have too often signaled that graduates are the audience that counts.
"By at least one survey, socialism is now more popular than capitalism among those under 30, although free markets are really popular." — Joan C. Williams
"Now it's happening to more privileged workers, and the result is that they also are becoming more extreme, but they tend to go to the far left." — Joan C. Williams
"What they gain is a potential for what I call the Mamdani Economic Coalition, which is working class people and these younger college grads." — Joan C. Williams
10. Talk to the People
The episode closes back with Bradley, asked what she wants from candidates heading into the midterms. Her list was a living wage, affordable housing, better health care, better childcare and better schools. Her instruction to both parties was shorter than that.
"A living wage. Affordable housing, better health care, better child care, better schools for our children." — Bertha Bradley
"Talk to the people. Ask us what we need and keep them promises." — Bertha Bradley
"They need to stop doing that because you're making people lose faith and hope in the government system, period." — Bertha Bradley, on candidates who disappear after an election
Bonus Insights
Williams on the limits of a single word as a campaign: "You know, as someone said, saying affordability five times fast is not enough."
Geography does part of the work in her argument. Graduates are concentrated in large cities and a limited number of places, while the Rust Belt is more heavily non-college than the country as a whole, and that is where elections are decided
Schrager's own route into the question was personal as well as professional: the union drive she was part of in graduate school failed at the time, and she pointed out that similar drives have since worked
Bradley's grandmother and grandfather were both working class in her telling, which is how she introduced the term before defining it
Williams's bottom line is that Democrats have a real opening with younger graduates and cannot win on it alone, because 60% of voters have no degree and their economic ask includes wages, not only prices.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Pew Research Center (Source of the identity figures the whole episode turns on, including the 60% and the six-point rise since 2024)
Union of Southern Service Workers (Where Bradley organizes for fair wages after retiring from fast food and home health care)
Bloomberg Opinion (Where Schrager's column on the term appeared earlier this year)
Democratic Socialists of America (Backed candidates who made primary headway in Michigan, Florida and New York, which prompted Williams's answer on younger graduates)
Books & Resources Mentioned
"Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back" – Joan C. Williams (Her book, and the source of the framing she brings to the interview)
"The Left's Coalition Crisis: Understanding the Massive Divide Between Working Class and College-Educated Voters and How to Bridge It" – Jared Abbott and Joan C. Williams (The study behind the 10-of-12 figure and the affordability finding)
"Nobody Knows What Working Class Even Means Anymore" – Allison Schrager (Her Bloomberg Opinion column, which is why the host brought her on)
If this was worth your time, send it to someone who has to have a view on this.
Get the latest market chatter as it happens: