Democrats’ White Collar Base

It’s why we increasingly hear about Republicans’ assault on the “middle class,” not the “working class.”

“Democrats rely on unions to help turn out the minority vote. Labor remains Democrats' only institutional bridge into the white middle and working class, men in particular. But [t]he shift in labor's membership from the private to the public sector also shifted it from majority blue collar to majority white collar. Between 1983 and 2010, the share of union members who worked in white-collar jobs, as defined by BLS, increased from 38% to 54%. The most likely member of a union is no longer a factory worker but a schoolteacher. . . Teachers alone constitute nearly a third of public sector union jobs.”

-- David Paul Kuhn, “RealClearPolitics” 2.27.11