Every now and then I come across a discussion of the “professional managerial class” (PMC) often dovetailing with a discussion of the contemporary education polarization defining political parties. I’m not totally connected to this discussion, but from what I can tell, folks argue that professionals (e.g. teachers, engineers) and managers (e.g. managers) have increasingly won in the modern knowledge economy and have also increasingly sorted into the Democratic party. Their (our, I’m a professor) interests crowd out the interests of working class voters, a traditional strong interest group in the Democratic party. The working class primarily had unions to get their voices heard, and unions have been decimated in the private sector and taken over by the PMC in the public sector. So now the Democratic party focuses less on redirecting money and status to America’s large and diverse working class and more on things like ping pong tables at Google and diversifying board rooms of non-oil financialization and private equity organizations, or whatever (I’m intentionally being flip and sarcastic here to try and hit the spirit of the argument).
I was curious about whether this “PMC” partisan reshuffling was actually happening, or else if it was just some old wine in a new bottle. Measuring the “professional” side of PMC is a little tricky, but measuring the “managerial” side should be easier. I can look at occupation titles with “manager!”
Here are some of the aggregate trends for folks aged 20-64 in the General Social Survey. I’m going to look at everyone, employed or not. And I take the occ1990 occupation classifications and make a dummy variable identifying folks who are some kind of manager (e.g. anyone with the word “manager” or “manag*” in their occupational title).
The percent of working-aged adults who are managers has roughly doubled since the early 1970s, from about 4ish percent to about 8ish percent. Unsurprisingly, this trend is concentrated among those with college degrees. Managers among those with a college degree or more has increased from about 7% to about 15% and has grown over the entire period, whereas managers increased from about 4-6% among those without college degree through the mid-1990s and has stayed at that level.
Educational attainment of managers and nonmanagers is next:
We see rapid increase in holding of college degree among managers, increasing from about 28% to about 50%. Non manager college increased from about 12% to about 28%. Of course, nonmanagers includes day laborers and physics professors, so it’s not the most informative comparison group. But we do see substantial growth and coupling of college degree attainment and managerial occupation expansion.
So what has happened to the partisan alignment of managers? The figure below plots the percent of folks by year who identify as Democrats (blue lines), independents (black lines) and Republicans (red lines). I’m looking at those between 20-64, but I’m not restricting it to those who are employed.
Unsurprisingly, the noncollege-nonmanager group has mass exited the Democratic party, with affiliation declining from about 60% in 1970 to about 45% in the mid-2000s. College-Managers began a massive influx into the Democratic party beginning in the early 1990s (Clinton time), increasing from about 37% to about 50%. Lots of movement of non-managers into “Independent” category, while today Managers are about as likely to be Democrat and Republican. Something not seen since the early 1970s.
If we look at connection to the Democratic party by educational attainment, we see sharp managerial convergence among those with a college degree.
Beginning in the 1990s, college educated managers began to really catch up with Democratic affiliation of non-managers with a college degree. There was about a 12 percentage point lower affiliation among college-managers through about 1990. That gap is now ~ 2.5%.
But want to see something pretty wild? Let’s look at trends by birth cohorts. Some folks argue this is a better way to see changing trends over time (people don’t change their minds, people die, and new cohorts replace them). Let’s start out by looking at the above graph plotted against birth year.
YOWZA!!! Massive change in college-manager partisan affiliation, rising from about 0.3 to about 0.55 over the range of GSS cohorts. In fact, we see very little change in non-manager college-educated partisan affiliation over time. We also see a massive collapse of non-college / non-manager Democratic affiliation.
Of course, the USA has become more racially diverse over time, and race is tightly connected with contemporary partisan affiliation. Perhaps these trends just reflect declines in the massive racial discrimination of college and work, with more racial minorities in managerial and college degree social positions. What if we restrict our focus only to white individuals over time?
Yowza again!!! There’s little change in Democratic affiliation over time among non-managers. MASSIVE growth of managerial partisanship. And massive decline, again, of non-college/non-manager Democratic affiliation.
Coming away from this, I’ve have a few very loose and terse conclusions:
The focus on the Democratic party’s affiliation with the “professional-managerial class” is on point.
This is preliminary evidence that managers are the primary drivers of education polarization. But before drawing too-strong conclusions, it’d be worth examining other specific occupation groups to see if similar patterns are replicated.
I’m not optimistic that this is the optimal base for the Democratic party.