Horizontal Divisions within the Middle Class

Abstract

In the Erikson and Goldthorpe schema, two criteria are used to single out the salaried middle class: on the one hand, the employment status separates (at least conceptually) employers and the self-employed from the much larger group of employees. On the other, the nature of the employment relationship allows to distinguish between various categories of wage-earners. Schematically, four large groupings emerge from the combination of these two distinctions: (1) the employees in professional and managerial occupations (‘the service class’), (2) the less powerful and more menial non-manual employees (‘routine white-collar’), (3) different categories of small employers, proprietors and self-employed workers (‘petite bourgeoisie’) and (4) skilled and non-skilled manual workers.