In the wake of the 2024 election, pundits and politicos have had much to say about the battle for the American “working class,” with their commentary—whether from the left, the right, or the middle—invariably accompanied by the same image: guys wearing hard hats, toiling away at a construction site or on an assembly line.
Such iconography isn’t surprising. Both political parties have stressed their commitment to reviving U.S. manufacturing and resuscitating parts of the country that were once defined by good factory jobs but have come over many years to feel hopelessly left behind.
But this picture is, in fact, misleading. Two-thirds of those without a four-year college degree—the criterion that many demographers use to define the “working class”—are employed in services (including health care, retail, and hospitality), compared with one-third in manufacturing, construction, and related industries. Their needs are distinct, and they remain largely unmet.
We know this because one of us has been researching and writing about this topic for many years. The other helped to shape labor policy in the Obama and Biden administrations—and, perhaps more to the point, has a mom who has worked as an hourly employee at Walmart since the late 1990s. (She currently makes $17.78 an hour as a floor associate.)
She and her frontline colleagues at the Walmart in Stone Mountain, Ga., express concerns that are common to many Americans—no matter what sector they’re working in. Among them: the high cost of housing and the difficulty in accessing high-quality medical care.
But tens of millions of those working in services face particular challenges.
At the top of the list is pay. At the Walmart in Georgia, workers jump to the Amazon warehouse across the street, and then back again to Walmart, for even the slightest raise.
Across the U.S., median annual pay for service workers without a four-year degree is $33,330—well below what it takes to make ends meet, given that more than 98% of Americans reside in a location where the living wage is at least $20 an hour, or $41,600 a year for a full-time employee. (In many urban centers, the living wage is much higher.)
By contrast, their peers engaged in production, transportation, and material moving have a median annual wage of $44,960, while those in construction have a median wage of $52,630.
Some places have made significant progress. California last year raised the minimum pay of fast-food workers to $20 an hour, with no discernable job loss despite howls of protest from the business community.
