The following stub of the article, “The Working Class Wants Policymakers To Reward Work and Listen to Their Values” by Aurelia Glass, David Madland and Karla Walter, is cross-posted from Americanprogressaction.org.
Research and events from the American Worker Project and others show that working-class families are struggling and want elected officials to focus on rewarding work while also representing their positions on other issues.
For years, working-class families have been struggling with high costs and with jobs that do not adequately reward hard work, and in 2024, working-class voters made their dissatisfaction with the status quo clear: 56 percent of them voted for Donald Trump, while only 43 percent voted for Kamala Harris. This outcome made the steady decline in working-class support for the Democratic Party—previously seen as the champion of working people’s interests—impossible to ignore and prompted a renewed debate on how policymakers can represent working-class interests.
In 2025, the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund published research and hosted events bringing together policymakers and researchers studying the issue of working-class representation in American politics. This column synthesizes findings from the AWP and elsewhere relating to the working class, including:
- Nearly two-thirds of the workforce, and roughly the same proportion of the electorate, is working class.
- The working class is more racially and ethnically diverse than the college-educated workforce.
- Working-class people struggle economically, burdened with high costs while working primarily in service jobs that do not offer decent wages.
- Working-class voters want progressive economic policies, especially those that reward work.
- Winning the working class requires more than just a strong economic message: Many working-class voters feel policymakers are out of touch, fail to address or even acknowledge cultural divides, or are more focused on the preferences of elites rather than prioritizing fights that will make the most difference to working people.
These findings make clear that anyone who wants to represent working-class Americans must prioritize a progressive economic agenda that strengthens worker power; ensures families can support themselves with decent pay and benefits; addresses skyrocketing costs for rent, groceries, and health care; and addresses the concerns of working-class voters on cultural issues.
Who is the working class?
The working class—defined as workers without a four-year college degree—makes up almost two-thirds of the workforce and a similar proportion of the electorate and is more racially and ethnically diverse than the college-educated workforce. While roughly two-thirds of the college-educated workforce is white, white workers make up just more than half of the working class.
More than three-quarters of working-class Americans work in the service sector, and the jobs most commonly held by working-class people tend to offer far lower wages than the jobs held by workers with college degrees. As shown in Figure 1, the median worker with a high school diploma earned a weekly income of $960 in the second quarter of 2025, compared with $1,732 for the median college-educated worker. Even after controlling for demographic factors such as age and gender, college-educated workers earn about 75 percent more than similar workers without a college education.
Read more here.
