Theworking class is a subset of employees who are compensated withwage orsalary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition.^[1][2] Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings fromwage labour. Most common definitions of "working class" in use in the United States limit its membership to workers who holdblue-collar andpink-collar jobs, or whose income is insufficiently high to place them in themiddle class, or both. However, socialists define "working class" to include all workers who fall into this category; thus, this definition can include almost all of the working population ofindustrialized economies.

As with many terms describingsocial class,working class is defined and used in different ways. One definition used by manysocialists is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour, a group otherwise referred to as theproletariat.^[3] In this sense, the working class includes white and blue-collar workers, manual and menial workers of all types, excluding individuals who derive their livelihood from business ownership or the labour of others.^{[4][verification needed]} The term, which is primarily used to evoke images of laborers suffering "class disadvantage in spite of their individual effort", can also have racial connotations, applying diverse themes of poverty and implications about whether one is deserving of aid.^[5]

In other contexts the termworking class refers to a section of society dependent on physicallabour, especially when compensated with an hourlywage (for certain types of science, as well as journalistic or political analysis). Working-class occupations can be categorized into four groups: unskilled labourers, artisans,outworkers, and factory workers.^{[6][page needed]}

Common alternative definitions of working class include definition by income level,^[7] whereby the working class is contrasted with amiddle class on the basis of access to economic resources,education, cultural interests, and other goods and services, and the "white working class" has been "loosely defined" by the New York Times as comprisingwhite people without college degrees.^[8]

Researchers in Australia have suggested thatworking class status should be defined subjectively as a self-identification with the working class group.^[9] This subjective approach allows individuals, rather than researchers, to define their own "subjective" and "perceived" social class.

Karl Marx defined the working class orproletariat as those individuals who sell theirlabour power forwages and who do not own themeans of production. He argued that they were responsible for creating thewealth of a society, asserting that the working class physically build bridges, craft furniture, grow food, and nurse children, but do not own land orfactories.^[10]

A sub-section of the proletariat, thelumpenproletariat (rag-proletariat), are the extremely poor and unemployed, such asday labourers andhomeless people. Marx considered them to be devoid of class consciousness.

In Marxist termswage labourers and those dependent on thewelfare state are working class, and those who live onaccumulated capital are not, and this broad dichotomy defines theclass struggle. InThe Communist Manifesto, Marx andFriedrich Engels argue that it is the destiny of the working class to displace thecapitalist system, with thedictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie") abolishing the social relationships underpinning the class system before then developing into acommunist society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

Infeudal Europe, the working class as such did not exist in large numbers. Instead, most people were part of the labouring class, a group made up of different professions, trades and occupations. A lawyer, craftsman and peasant were all considered to be part of the samesocial unit, athird estate of people who were neitheraristocrats nor church officials. Similar hierarchies existed outside Europe in otherpre-industrial societies. The social position of these labouring classes was viewed as ordained bynatural law and common religious belief.^{[citation needed]} This social position was contested, particularly by peasants, for example during theGerman Peasants' War.^[11]

In the late 18th century, under the influence of theEnlightenment, European society was in a state of change, and this change could not be reconciled with the idea of a changeless God-created social order. Wealthy members of these societies created ideologies which blamed many of the problems of working-class people on their morals and ethics (i.e. excessive consumption of alcohol, perceived laziness and inability to save money). InThe Making of the English Working Class,E. P. Thompson argues that the English working class was present at its own creation, and seeks to describe the transformation of pre-modern labouring classes into a modern, politically self-conscious, working class.^{[12][verification needed][13]}

Starting around 1917, a number of countries became ruled ostensibly in the interests of the working class (seeSoviet working class). Some historians have noted that a key change in these Soviet-style societies has been a new type ofproletarianization, often effected by the administratively achieved forced displacement of peasants and rural workers. Since then, four major industrial states have turned towards semi-market-based governance (China,Laos,Vietnam,Cuba), and one state has turned inwards into an increasing cycle of poverty and brutalization (North Korea). Other states of this sort have collapsed (such as theSoviet Union).^[14]

Since 1960, large-scale proletarianization andenclosure of commons has occurred in thethird world, generating new working classes. Additionally, countries such asIndia have been slowly undergoing social change, expanding the size of the urban working class.^{[15][page needed]}

Theinformal working class is a sociological term coined byMike Davis for a class of over a billion predominantly young urban people who are in no way formally connected to theglobal economy and who try to survive primarily inslums. According to Davis, this class no longer corresponds to thesocio-theoretical concepts of a class, from Marx,Max Weber or thetheory of modernization. Thereafter, this class developed worldwide from the 1960s, especially in the southern hemisphere. In contrast to previous notions of a class of the lumpen proletariat or the notions of a "slum of hope" from the 1920s and 1930s, members of this class are given hardly any chances of attaining membership of the formal economic structures.^[16][17]

Diane Reay stresses the challenges that working-class students can face during the transition to and within higher education, and research intensive universities in particular. One factor can be the university community being perceived as a predominately middle-class social space, creating a sense of otherness due to class differences in social norms and knowledge of navigating academia.^[18]

• The Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University