#shrinking middle class

Curated by Lisa Wade, PhD

Today is Labor Day in the U.S. Though many think of it mostly as a last long weekend for recreation and shopping before the symbolic end of summer, the federal holiday, officially established in 1894, celebrates the contributions of labor.

Here are some SocImages posts on a range of issues related to workers, from the history of the labor movement, to current workplace conditions, to the impacts of the changing economy on workers’ pay:

The Social Construction of Work

The surprisingly racist reason we don’t tip flight attendants

Luxury and the consumption of labor

The unsung heroes of the crash landing in San Francisco

Why do firefighters take such risky jobs?

McDonald’s delusional blame-the-victim budget

Devaluing hospitality workers

Domestic  behavior as both gendered and raced: Who does what for airlines?

Child labor and the social construction of childhood

Child labor, 1908-1912

Women are 49% of the workforce, but we still think work is for men

Work in Popular Culture

Children’s books and segregation in the workplace

Alienation and orange juice: The invisibility of labor

Hurricane Sandy and high fashion: Portraying a class hierarchy

Whimsical branding obscures Apple’s troubled supply chain

The “working family” discourse and the invisibility of individuals

The DJ in American culture: Resonant but misunderstood

Whiteness and tokenism on the runway

The solution to patriarchy? Pantene says shine!

Forbes’ photostock faux paus (what do women workers look like?)

Unemployment, Underemployment, and the “Class War”

The “Precariat”: The new working class

When classes collide: Workers and guests at high end hotels

Who benefits from government programs?

$22.62/hr: The minimum wage if it had risen like the incomes of the 1%

Why can’t conservatives see the benefits of affordable child care?

Food stamps, public policy, and the working poor

The striking rise in “missing workers”

Can the minimum wage cover average housing costs?

Discrimination against the long-term unemployed

Jon Stewart on class warfare

Mike Rowe defends blue-collar manual labor

Unions and Unionization

What have unions ever done for us?

Footage of strikes and protests

“Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?”

A way for feminism to overcome its “class problem”

Target’s anti-union video for new employees

Unemployment and support for unions

César Chávez and the fight for farmworkers’ rights

Hiring non-union workers to staff picket lines

“A woman’s place is in her union!”

Economic Change, Globalization, and the Great Recession

U.S jobs are back, but they’re no match for population growth

The U.S. is replacing good jobs with bad ones

Whose economic recovery is it?

Prison labor and taxpayer dollars

The austerity agenda and public employment

Comparing black and white job loss in the recession

The exploitation of worker productivity

What kinds of jobs are we gaining in the slow recovery?

Historical look at changes in types of work

Two American families trapped in a changing economy

Race and the economic downturn

Work and race, ethnicity, religion, and immigration

Distrust for Black entrepreneurs

Race in the NFL draft

Are Mexicans the most successful immigrant group?

Race, criminal background, and employment

The curious evolution of the sign spinnner

Linguistic occupational segregation

International politics and the first African American flight attendants

Luxury and the consumption of labor

Children’s books and segregation in the workplace

Whiteness and tokenism on the runway

Whimsical branding obscures Apple’s troubled supply chain

When classes collide: Workers and guests at high end hotels

The surprisingly racist reason we don’t tip flight attendants

Questioning the benefits of “rescue” from prostitution

Porn producers with a heart of gold?

Anti-Muslim bias on the French job market

Race/ethnicity and the pay gap

Race, ethnicity, and McDonald’s marketing strategy

Gender and Work

Majority of “stay-at-home dads” aren’t there to care for family

Most women would rather divorce than be a housewife

Before the stewardess, the “steward”: When flight attendants were men

Star Trek is scaring the ladies: Why women don’t major in computer science

What do little girls really learn from “Career Barbies”?

“Dude, you need to get into nursing”: How organizations recruit men into nursing

Stay-at-home mothers on the rise among low-income families

Gender at The New York Times

Mother, sex object, worker: The transformation of the female flight attendant

Female movie stars peak at 34, but men see success till the end (pictured)

What kind of work does Women’s History month value?

Men’s and women’s work: It’s the 1950s at Brinks Home Security

Women’s refusal to be deferent and the words that describe them

Why “breadwinner moms” don’t portend a coming matriarchy

Single mother, meet jobless man

Gender, work, and family time

First-time mothers and access to paid work leave

The role of employer selection in gendered job segregation

The U.S. in International Perspective

Overwork and its costs

The U.S. is las in paid vacation and holidays

International comparison of workplace leave policies

Vacation in international perspective

Academia

What do professors do all day?

Gender and the dual career academic couple

How many PhDs are professors?

Professors join the “precariat”

How professors spend their time

Precious academic moments

Just for Fun

Who is the highest paid employee of your state?

Secrets of the Internet Adult Film Database

Two-thirds of college students think they’re going to change the world

Bonus!

The trucker, his downfall, and the US economy.

By Lisa Wade, PhD

According to the above graphic by NPR, “truck driver” is the most common occupation in most US states. But truck driving isn’t what it used to be. In 1980, truckers made the equivalent of $110,000 annually; today, the average trucker makes $40,000. What happened to this omnipresent American occupation?

At the Atlantic, sociologist Steve Viscelli describes his research on truckers. He took an entry level long-haul trucking job, interviewed workers, and studied its history. He found that the industry had essentially eviscerated worker pay, largely by turning truckers into independent contractors, misleading them about the benefits of this arrangement, and locking them into punitive contracts.

Viscelli argues that few truckers are fully informed as to what it means to be an independent contractor, at least at first. Trucking companies sell them on the idea that they’ll be their own boss and set their own hours, but they don’t emphasize that they will pay significantly more taxes, their own expenses, and the lease on a truck. Viscelli interviews one man who took home the equivalent of 50 cents an hour one week; another week he’d ended up owing the company $100. As independent contractors, he writes, truckers “end up working harder and earning far less than they would otherwise.”

If truckers want to get out of these contracts, the companies can hold their lease over their heads. Truckers sign a years-long contract to lease their truck along with a promise not to work for anyone else. If the contract is violated, the worker is on the hook for the entire lease. This could be tens of thousands of dollars, so the trucker can’t afford to quit. He’s no longer working, in other words, to make money; he’s just working, sometimes for years, to avoid debt.

The decimation of this once strongly middle class job is just one story among many. Add them all up — all of those occupations that no longer provide a middle class income, and the rise of lower paying jobs — and you get the shrinking of the middle class. Since 1970, fewer and fewer Americans qualify as middle income, defined as a household income that is between two-thirds of and double the median, or middle, household income.

You can see it shrink in this graphic by Deseret News using data from the Pew Research Center:

Part of the reason is that we have transitioned to an industrial economy to one that offers jobs primarily in service (low paying) and knowledge/information (high paying), but the other part is the restructuring of work to increasingly benefit owners, operators, and investors over workers. As the middle class has been shrinking, the productivity of American workers has been climbing, but the workers haven’t been the beneficiaries of their own work. Instead, employers have just been taking a larger and larger share of the value added that workers produce.

Figure from the Wall Street Journal with data from the Economic Policy Institute:

Between 1948 and 1973, productivity and wages increased at close to the same rate (97% and 91% respectively), but between 1973 and 2014, productivity has continued to climb (increasing by 72%), while wages have not (increasing by only 9%).

This is why so many Americans are struggling to stay afloat today. We’ve designed an economy that makes it ever more difficult to land in the middle class. Trucking isn’t the job it used to be, that is, because we aren’t the country we used to be.

The American middle class is losing ground in metropolitan areas across the country, affecting communities from Boston to Seattle and from Dallas to Milwaukee. From 2000 to 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas examined in a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas, compared with a 4-point drop nationally.

The shrinking of the middle class at the national level, to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S., was documented in an earlier analysis by the Pew Research Center. The changes at the metropolitan level, the subject of this in-depth look at the American middle class, demonstrate that the national trend is the result of widespread declines in localities all around the country.

Illustrating global wealth inequality.

By Lisa Wade, PhD

Wealth inequality in the U.S. is extreme, but global wealth inequality, illustrates a video by The Rules, is even more stunning. Some facts:

The top 20% control 80% of the world’s wealth.

The richest 2% control more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population.

The richest 300 people on earth have more wealth than the poorest 3,000,000,000.

200 years ago, rich countries were three times as rich as poor countries. Today, they are eighty times richer.

Rich countries give $130 billion dollars worth of aid to poor countries every year, but they extract $2 trillion each year thanks to global economic rules.

Here are their sources; or watch the four minute video above.

The Rules wants to reveal and challenge the laws that govern our global economy. It is a distinctly sociological project, looking at how factors outside of individuals — or, in this case, countries — shape lives. Shaped strongly by the richest countries in their own best interest, rules governing the trading of goods and money are determining the economic solvency and future of countries.

When those rules are invisible, it can seem like struggling countries are just poorly managed or culturally problematic when, in fact, the rules ensure that the deck is stacked against them.

Hat tip to Martin Hart-Landsberg.