Some Observations on Employment and Class in Ireland, 2004-2010
Since 2008, the number of middle class jobs in Ireland has fallen by about five per cent. During the same time, the number of working class jobs has fallen by about 15 per cent - three times the rate of that for professional and managerial occupations.
However, when we look at the amount of jobs lost since 2008, in terms of that figure, four out of every five has been a working class job.
The breakdown into middle class and working class occupations as used below is based on the Quarterly Household Survey’s detailed breakdown of occupations, 2004-2010, which is available on request from the CSO.
I’ve assigned each occupation according to the definition of class as a power relation. Class is not a category, but we aggregates of jobs and occupations in order to get an indication of the power relations within the economy. And what is presented here is a breakdown of jobs, not people. They are inter-related, of course, but this is not a social class study. This is about economic class relations. There’s a strong correlation between both, but one does not determine the other.
My breakdown of each class, based on the Q4 2010 survey, is below. The CSO does not list figures for occupations with less than 1,000 persons. This is because the Quarterly Household Survey is a sample survey, and with figures of less than 1,000 the estimates become unreliable. For more information on the Quarterly Household Survey, click here.
The CSO has its own broad occupation groups. These are:
1. Managers and administrators
2. Professional
3. Associate professional and technical
4. Clerical and secretarial
5. Craft and related
6. Personal and protective service
7. Sales
8. Plant and machine operatives
9. Other broad occupational groups
If we take the first three as reflective of middle class occupations, we get a graph something like this:
The CSO data for broad occupational groups is here.
Discussion
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Comment by: Eoin O\'Mahony
Apr 20th 2011 at 10:04
Fantastic work, thank you.
Comment by: Colman
Apr 20th 2011 at 11:04
I still think your list of middle class occupations is too expansive. I don’t understand the power available to a lot of the occupations in that list.
Are independent tradespeople included in the working class or is it just employed tradespeople?
Comment by: Conor McCabe
Apr 20th 2011 at 12:04
As far as I can gather from the CSO, self-employed (with no employees) tradespeople are included with employed tradespeople. But I’ll have to check that with them.
Just to state again, this is a survey of jobs, not people. A plasterer is a working class occupation. A self-employed plasterer is self-employed at a working class occupation. Does that mean that a self-employed plasterer is working class? Maybe, maybe not. A lot of plasterers on building sites are put down as self-employed for tax purposes, but they’re still contract workers. The occupation alone is not enough to make that call. This is because a job is not a determinator of class, but it is an indicator of it. The above is just a baseline. It needs to be expanded upon, but it’s the starting point.
Comment by: Aidan R
Apr 20th 2011 at 13:04
Excellent. Thanks for this. Really useful.
Whether we can move from this occupational description to a political class analysis is a more complex question. Sticking to a strict ‘economistic’ measurement of class relations will always be prone to accusations of ‘functionalism’ and ’structuralism’. But, either way, a great starting point.
It would be interesting to identify the percentage of those in ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’ jobs that are unionised. After briefly examining the occupations, I think it would be fair to say that middle class jobs are more unionised (and hence, mainly in the public sector). Might this account for the lower number of job losses since 2008?
However, most of the job losses in working class occupations can be explained by the collapse in construction related activity (and these tend to be unionised - with the exception of self employed - which increased substantially for tax evasion purposes)
It would also be interesting to identfy trends over time in the number of middle and working class jobs created. The huge increase in the employment rate from 1995 was predominately accounted for by an increase in non-union private service employment and adminstrative/managers. From your analysis of the data - would it be fair to say that even though there are more working class jobs, the trend in the labour market (job creation) has been increase in middle class jobs?
Finally, it would be great to have data on the precise voting pattern of those in working and middle class jobs. If it turned out that the working class have low participation (voting) rates - there is hope. If it turns out that they predominately vote for the two centre right parties - we have a struggle on our hands.
All in all - would make for a great research project.
Comment by: Conor McCabe
Apr 20th 2011 at 14:04
That’s true Aiden. There’s no point going down the Olin Wright / Goldthorpe road. A class analysis which doesn’t engage with economic class relations, though, isn’t a class analysis. I’ve no interest in the sins of British marxism and its bloody deterministic outlook - its influence has wrecked Irish marxism as far as I can see - but as you say it would be wrong put to one side economic class relations just because the determinists decided to use the stats to make the case alone. Economic class relations is not the whole picture, not even close to it, but it’s the anchor which stops class analysis drifting into identity politics and ‘empowerment’.
I haven’t looked at the survey in terms of trade union membership/unionised sectors. There has been a ten per cent drop in public sector employment, though, which is heavily unionised, although, the losses there were made easy by the contract work employment which really took off after 2001.
I’ll put up the Quarterly Household Survey occupational breakdown Aiden. It goes back as far as 2004. I think you might have some fun with the figures !
Comment by: Aidan R
Apr 20th 2011 at 14:04
“Economic class relations is not the whole picture, not even close to it, but it’s the anchor which stops class analysis drifting into identity politics”
Spot on, couldn’t agree more! It also stops economic/political sociology from becoming a vague and esoteric reflection on a not yet actualised ‘multitude’ of ’social movements’.
Despite the huge change in Irelands labour market since the late 1980’s there has yet to be a detailed analysis to either document or explain the change (and its political implications). This work goes a long way toward it.
Comment by: Conor McCabe
Apr 20th 2011 at 14:04
Yeah I mean, if it does nothing else, if that’s all that economic class relations brings to the table, I’d be very happy with that. But as you point out, it’s a small part of working class studies, but it’s also the part that’s missing.
And as for ‘empowerment’, if I have to go to another Irish working class studies group where the participants talk about their feelings or read out a poem they wrote about growing up on ‘de estate’ I swear I’ll fucking punch someone.
Comment by: John Green
Apr 20th 2011 at 16:04
“Economic class relations is not the whole picture, not even close to it, but it’s the anchor which stops class analysis drifting into identity politics.”
Can I raise even one cheer here for some recognition of identity politics, inasmuch as there is necessarily an overlap between economic class relations and gender relations? Definitions of what constitute productive and unproductive labour (as opposed to paid and unpaid labour) are often central to the contruction of economic models and therefore to class analysis, but such definitions don’t always receive a gender inflection. Is housework and child-rearing unproductive labour? What class does a housewife belong to? That of her husband? Or do all women (and, more recently, men) working in the home belong to one class of unpaid but productive labour that consequently merits differentiation from the paid and unproductive classes (e.g. in services and distribution)?
I realize that this isn’t really germane to the discussion here, but I do think there’s a valid case to be made for some form of gender analysis that takes into account the patriarchal as well as economic basis of exploitation.
Comment by: Conor McCabe
Apr 20th 2011 at 16:04
Oh absolutely John, and this comes up all the time, but that’s Goldthorpe et al for you insisting that the householder determines the class of the household.
There’s an interesting discussion in American working class studies relating to class and race, and there the point is made that whatever the limitations of studies of economic class relations, once you lose that focus, you lose the bigger picture of how the machine works.
I mean, with notable exceptions (Rosemary Crompton for one), British sociology spent decades putting forward class studies as the parameters of government statistical reports - and in Irish studies I’ve read to date Goldthorpe is treated as canonical. I’m not putting forward a goldthorpe world. All the pieces matter here. But it’s all of them, economic class relations as well.
Comment by: Conor McCabe
Apr 20th 2011 at 16:04
The CSO just got back onto me and sure enough, the occupation figures include both self-employed and employees.
Comment by: Aidan R
Apr 20th 2011 at 16:04
Re: John
My approach to this is quite simple. Domestic labour and child rearing, that is predominately carried out by women, is productive labour and should be compensated as such. The subsequent question is who pays for it. This is where the economists get annoyed because they cannot accept the idea that it is within the collective interest of taxpayers to pay via the state for domestic labour such as domestic parenting.
But, it seems to be that the more pertinent question on gender and class is related to empirical changes in the labour market (as opposed to well worn theoretical debates of class and gender in explaining social structures and change). This is an empirical question on the relationship between gender and labour markets gets very little attention in Ireland.
The number one factor that explains the exponential increase in the labour force and employment rate post 1990 is the increase female labour market participation. This reflects a huge societal change in the nature of work and the economy that has yet to be fully grasped in Ireland. It also reflects a change in the composition of work i.e. most of it is either well paid and secure public service employment (health, education and some aspects of social care) or low paid insecure private sector services (cleaning) or relatively well paid private sector services (finance).
Comment by: Conor McCabe
Apr 20th 2011 at 16:04
“The number one factor that explains the exponential increase in the labour force and employment rate post 1990 is the increase female labour market participation. This reflects a huge societal change in the nature of work and the economy that has yet to be fully grasped in Ireland.”
Absolutely. I have some figures who show that but left them out of this post. I’ll do it up over the wknd and I’ll put it up along with the Quarterly Household Survey excel file.
Comment by: John Green
Apr 21st 2011 at 09:04
Aidan and Conor–
Thanks both of you for your lucid replies and for not shooting me down in flames. What I was trying to do was deliberately problematize the concept of class by introducing elements of class definition that are not intrinsically economic. There’s a tendency on the Left to define class relations exclusively in terms of relations to the means of production (in itself problematic: do we mean ownership of the means of production, control of the means of production, ownership of/control over the fruits of production?) whereas class can also be interpreted in terms of one’s relationship to the means of social (rather than economic) re-production. This is why I differentiated between child-rearing (unpaid but socially productive) and services and distribution (paid but economically unproductive). Child-rearing produces not just a commodity, i.e. a member of the future workforce, but also a citizen, a consumer, a voter, etc., etc.
You’re quite right, Aidan, that it isn’t pertinent to this particular debate. Mea culpa. I just have a knee-jerk response when anyone on the Left, especially men, mention “identity politics’ as if it’s intrinsically a bad thing.
Cheers
John
Comment by: Conor McCabe
Apr 21st 2011 at 21:04
“here’s a tendency on the Left to define class relations exclusively in terms of relations to the means of production”
Absolutely John, I completely agree with you, which is why I’m always at pains to point out that I’m not discussing social class, and that what I’m dealing with here is jobs not people. It’s purpose is to give a sense of the dynamics of the economy, from which a more rich and complex class analysis can arise.
It’s even more pertinent in an Irish context when you think that in 1091 and 1911 the British census was unable to categorize dozens of jobs in Ireland involving tens of thousands of people because it just didn’t have the numbers of them in Great Britain for them to have come up with categories. I’m not working on economic class relations in Ireland from 1901 to 2010 because I want to see it as a definer of class in Ireland, but because it’s never been done, and where it has been attempted it’s been with the assumptions of work and jobs from the British experience slapped on top of the Irish experience of work and jobs - which is an altogether different reality.
just on the issue of unpaid work in the household - in Ireland up to the 1960s at least one of the largest contributors to Ireland’s dollar balance was the money sent home by emigrants in America. Now, those jobs don’t show up on the census. They don’t show up on employment charts. Yet, the work those emigrants did contributed to the wealth of the household. What class are they?
In terms of working class households, my own father’s family in the 1940s and 1950s was kept going by money sent home every month by his father (my grandfather) who was working as a porter in Guy’s hospital in London.
Is that part of social class analysis? Not in Irish studies it aint. Can it be quantified? Again, not with the census or irish employment surveys. I highlight it just as an example of the differences in problems faced in trying to understand Irish economic and social class relations with a British template, which is what the Irish left tends to do.
Comment by: David O'Donnell
Apr 22nd 2011 at 21:04
Useful work. Keep it up … class as a power relation …
Comment by: John Green
Apr 25th 2011 at 07:04
Cheers, Conor. Significant points you raise there, especially about the quantification of social contribution/value. With regards to the increase of female labour market participation, it’s also worthwhile drawing attention to the increased commodification/marketization of the private sphere. As women have moved into the labour market, so at the same time have domestic tasks become regarded as legitimate wage-paying jobs. Arlie Russell Hochschild is particularly good on this in “The Commercialization of Intimate Life,” and “The Managed Heart.” Whereas previously the contributions of women to the reproduction of society could regarded as economic externalities (women as a kind of inexhaustible Commons), as they have moved out of the domestic sphere and into the workplace, so the definition of the workplace has expanded to include what was previously the domestic sphere. The logic of capitalism is, of course, to value everything in terms of its price - its solution to despoliation of the planet is to try to put a price on Nature in the form of carbon trading, for instance - with the result that we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
The recent fad for expanding economic explanations into the broader social domain (I’m thinking of Tim Harford, Stephen Levitt, etc.) has ironically enough been accompanied by the economic colonization of actual social relations, as Hochschild points out. This attempt to reduce us to Homo economicus is a manoeuvre that I think the Left needs to resist, and I don’t believe this can be done by following capitalist logic down the same road and arguing simply that Nature is undervalued or that women/workers are not being compensated for the full value of their labour. Pricing is certainly a reflection of power relationships, but it also reflects a particular worldview and attitude toward society that needs to be transformed.
I’m going off on a tangent once again. But I think both the idea of class as power, and capital as power (as outlined by Shimson and Bichler in their recent work of the same name) are both valuable ways of incorporating economic relations into a broader conceptualization of society as a whole.
Cheers
John