Many policymakers today claim to speak for the struggles that working families face, but any vision for America that promises to revitalize the working class must recognize who its members actually are and the challenges they face.
The working class—defined as workers without a four-year college degree—makes up almost two-thirds of the workforce and is more racially and ethnically diverse than the college-educated workforce. Moreover, more than three-quarters of working-class Americans work in the service sector and workers without college degrees are more likely to have occupations that pay low wages.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/understanding-the-working-class-and-the-challenges-it-faces/“Working families are defined as families with a non-elderly, non-disabled head of household whose income is reported by HUD [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] to be ‘primarily from earnings.’ Most of these households have children, but some do not (Sard, & Fischer, 2003).”
“Low- to moderate-income working families are defined as those who work the equivalent of a full-time job and earn between the minimum wage of $10,712 and up to 120 percent of the median income in their area (Lipman, 2002).”
“Today everybody is part of a working family. There’s no single model; it’s not the old stereotype of the male breadwinner with the wife at home taking care of the family and community needs. That situation represents less than twenty percent of people that work today.
We have working families of all varieties, from the sole breadwinner to the majority of families where there are two parents in the workforce, not necessarily both working full-time, but with various working time arrangements. Other possible situations include single parent families where one parent has full responsibility for all work and family needs as well as families where parents are not in the workforce and the children are growing up on public assistance without any role models in the workplace. There are also other variations of working families, from people with partners who have children and are sharing responsibility for them to grandparents and other relatives involved in parenting and economic support. Families are very diverse. Likewise, workers are very diverse; some work part-time, some work full-time, some have situations in which there’s steady employment, and others work from time to time (Casey & Corday, 2006).”
https://wfrn.org/glossary/working-family/
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