In an excellent new book by Erzsebet Bukodi and John Goldthorpe, entitled Social Mobility and Education in Britain, the class (as defined by NS-SEC) distributions of economically active men and women are calculated at the census years of 1951, 1971, 1991 and 2011. Why is this relevant to my ‘sociological autobiography’? And does this Weberian conceptualisation of class not offend my longstanding Marxian sensibilities? Well, its horses for courses.
NS-SEC critically ‘absents’ what I have come to call the capitalist executive in general, and the miniscule minority of well under 1% comprising capital monopolists in particular, and is thus unhelpful in investigating how an ever more concentrated hard core of capital-owners have become increasingly well placed to buy political power to shape policy in their interests.
Notwithstanding this absence, NS-SEC remains an appropriate tool for indicating changing degrees of absolute and relative social mobility.
Analyses deploying NS-SEC graphically illustrate the stark changes in the distribution of work over my lifecourse (I was born in 1948 and have just now turned 70). And much follows on from these changes, hence this rather technical fragment.
A cursory outline of the class breakdown in NS-SEC reads as follows:
Class 1: Higher managers and professionals
(eg general managers in large companies and organisations, higher-grade civil servants and local government officials, architects, lawyers, medical practitioners, professional engineers, scientists, university teachers)
Class 2: Lower managers and professionals
(eg general managers in small companies and organisations, site managers, office managers, workshop managers, lower-grade civil servants and local government officers, librarians, nurses, physiotherapists, school teachers, social workers, surveyors)
Class 3: Ancillary professional and administrative
(eg computer maintenance staff, draughtspersons, library assistants, nursery nurses, paramedical staff, cashiers, clerical workers, data processing operators, personal assistants, secretaries)
Class 4: Small employers and own account workers
(eg garage proprietors, builders, café proprietors, craftsmen, market traders, publicans, shopkeepers)
Class 5: Lower supervisory & technical occupations
(eg foremen, and site and works supervisors, auto-engineers, heating engineers, instrument technicians, laboratory technicians, printers, tool- and pattern-makers, TV and video engineers)
Class 6: Semi-routine occupations
(eg care assistants, caretakers and housekeepers, , chefs and cooks, chemical process workers, crane drivers, factory machinists, fitters, postal workers, receptionists, sales assistants, store controllers and despatchers, traffic wardens)
Class 7: Routine occupations
(eg bus and van drivers, construction site and other labourers, craftsmen’s mates, food process workers, counter and bar staff, house and office cleaners, kitchen assistants, packers and fillers, porters and attendants, refuse collectors, warehouse workers)
You can see why NS-SEC is conspicuously unhelpful in considering capital ownership and power! Ok, horses for courses. But I also feel compelled to add that this categorisation is no measure of the value added to society by those working in the clusters of occupations it specifies. For example, care workers are undoubtedly a positive for our collective wellbeing, financiers no less indisputably a negative (I’ve blogged on this elsewhere).
Bukodi and Goldthorpe’s offer the following summary statements. As far as men are concerned, they write:
In 1951 the wage-earning working class, as represented by NS-SEC Classes 6 and 7, was predominant, accounting for well over half the active male population. In contrast, the managerial and professional salariat, as represented by Classes 1 and 2, accounted for little more than a tenth. But over the period covered the working class contracts and the salariat expands, and especially rapidly between 1951 and 1991. Thus, by 2011 the working class is reduced to less than a third of the active male population while the salariat comprises around two-fifths. The three intermediate classes, NS-SEC Classes 3, 4 and 5, remain more stable in size, although some slight decline is indicated in the proportion of men in Class 3, that of employees in ancillary professional and administrative occupations.
And for women:
In the case of women, the distributions change for the most part in the same way as with men, even if somewhat more slowly, and in particular the increase in the proportion in the higher-level managerial and professional positions of NS-SEC Class 1 is less marked. The one major difference from men comes with NS-SEC Class 3 which between 1951 and 1971 expanded so as to account for over a third of the active female population but then contracted so as to account for only a quarter by 2011 – a reflection chiefly of the rise and fall of the office secretary and typist.’
If its not too esoteric or rude, I’d like to include a table. It records the class, NS-SEC, distributions (%) of economically active populations, 1951-2011. Here goes:
| MEN | ||||
| CLASS | ||||
| 1 | 4 | 10 | 15 | 18 |
| 2 | 7 | 15 | 20 | 22 |
| 3 + 4 + 5 | 10 – 10 – 14 | 8 – 10 -12 | 8 – 10 – 12 | 7 – 13 – 10 |
| 6 + 7 | 55 | 45 | 35 | 30 |
| 1951 | 1971 | 1991 | 2011 | |
| WOMEN | ||||
| CLASS | ||||
| 1 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 8 |
| 2 | 6 | 10 | 20 | 22 |
| 3 + 4 + 5 | 30 – 6 – 6 | 36 – 4 – 4 | 30 – 4 – 4 | 25 – 6 – 4 |
| 6 + 7 | 50 | 42 | 35 | 35 |
| 1951 | 1971 | 1991 | 2011 |
Such has been the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial social formation that I’ve lived through.
I will – and I accept I must – return to the much misunderstood distinction between absolute and relative social mobility in a subsequent contribution. For now I want to register the much-altered workforce with which my predecessors, consecrates and successors have been faced, are facing, or will be facing. In this respect among many others, my mum and dad, Annette and I and our four daughters have inhabited/inhabit different eras. Annette and I graduated in 1971, beneficiaries of the exceptionally mild, tamed era of postwar welfare-state capitalism. Not that life even was without its challenges!