Recent empirical research affirms that class definitions should be based on occupation rather than income1
While the middle class is growing, especially in professional and managerial positions, the working class is shrinking. These changes have significant economic, political, and social impacts. Unions experience fluctuations in membership as they respond to the evolving social structure and labor market.
This visualization project utilizes the professional class definitions proposed by Oesch to illustrate patterns in migration background, union membership status, professional class, income levels, vote recall, and gender in Germany between 2014 and 2023, using representative samples from the European Social Survey.
Oesch outlines a comprehensive 16-class framework for researching topics such as labor market stratification and gender segregation. For research on topics like party preferences and political participation, these 16 classes can be collapsed into 8, and for studying intergenerational social mobility and inequality, they can be further collapsed into 5 classes.
More information can be found in the tables below.
| The detailed 16-class schema based on four hierarchical levels and four work logics (useful for research into topics such as labour market stratification or gender segregation) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-employed | Employees | ||
| Independent Work Logic | Technical Work Logic | Organizational Work Logic | Interpersonal Service Work Logic |
| 1. Large Employers | 2. Self-Employed Professionals | 5. Technical experts | 9. Higher-grade managers | 13. Socio-cultural professionals |
| 3. Small business owners with employees | 6. Technicians | 10. Lower grade managers | 14. Socio-cultural semi-professionals |
| 4. Small business owners without employees | 7. Skilled crafts workers | 11. Skilled clerks | 15. Skilled service workers |
| 8. Low-skilled production workers | 12. Low-skilled clerks | 16. Low-skilled service workers | |
| The collapsed 8-class schema based on two hierarchical levels and four work logics (useful for research into topics such as party preferences and political participation) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent Work Logic | Technical Work Logic | Organizational Work Logic | Interpersonal Service Work Logic |
| 1. Large employers & self-employed professionals | 3. Technical (semi-)professionals | 5.(Associate) managers | 7. Socio-cultural (semi-) professionals |
| 2. Small business owners | 4. Production workers | 6. Office clerks | 8. Service workers |
| The collapsed 5-class schema based on four hierarchical levels and small business owners (useful for research into topics such as intergenerational social mobility and social inequality) | |
|---|---|
| 1. Upper and upper-middle class (large employers, self-employed and employed professionals, managers) | |
| 3. Small business owners (with or without employees) | 2. Lower middle class (semi-professionals and associate managers) |
| 4. Skilled-working class (craft workers, clerks and skilled service workers) | |
| 5. Low-skilled working class | |
The charts present descriptive statistics as percentages, accounting for stratification and design weights. Users can switch between years and filter by migration background, union membership status, class, income, vote recall, and gender.