Career and class

The comments by superdestroyer, Jody, and The Superflous Man to my post about unpaid internships make some valuable points about career choices and class.

It's probably obvious to most people that if a college professor and a UPS truck driver earn the same salary (and there are many college professors who earn less than the unionized UPS drivers), the college professor still has more class.

But the class distinctions between other jobs aren't quite as obvious and therefore are easily overlooked, or intentionally ignored by people who pretend there's no such thing as class.

Jobs in engineering and computer programming are lower class white collar jobs compared to journalism or museum curating, even though the former jobs pay better. It's easier to earn a six figure salary as a computer programmer than it is as a lawyer, but the lawyer has a higher class job.

When a low class job has salaries that are "too high," people consider this a "shortage" that needs correcting by allowing more immigration. This is why the computer programming field is full of immigrants. And I wrote about the nursing shortage a few days ago. Nursing is definitely seen as a low prestige job despite that fact that four year college degrees are offered in nursing.

On the other hand, there is no call to import more lawyers in order to lower the cost of legal services. To the ruling upper classes, it seems natural and right that high class workers make a lot of money, but if someone in a low class job makes a lot of money then this is a "problem" that needs to be solved by importing more workers from overseas.

What are some of the characteristics that distinguish upper class white collar jobs from lower class white collar jobs besides the social class background of the workers?

The upper classes seem to favor winner-takes-all professions. In computer programming, engineering, or nursing, it's easy to find a job and work your way into a good salary, even a six figure salary, but then your career reaches a plateau. In upper class professions the salary distribution is much more pyramidal. A few lucky lawyers who become partners at big law firms earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, but a large number of lawyers at the bottom are worse off than typical computer programmers.

Upper class professions are more verbal, while lower class professions are more numerical.

Career paths in which the entry level position requires commision based sales are lower class. In higher class careers, one starts out with a salaried position and then gets promoted into sales. For example, the partners at law firms do the sales while the associates do the real work, and the same is true in investment banking except that the salespeople are called "directors" instead of "partners."

Certain types of federal government jobs are upper class but others are lower class. This seems related to the location of the office. If the office is in DC it's more likely to be an upper class job, but if it's located in Virginia then it's probably a lower class job. If it's in Virginia outside the Beltway then all the people working in the office have big beer bellies and drive to work in pickup trucks.

Unpaid internships are more common for upper class career paths, as pointed out by superdestoyer. I think there are two reasons why this is the case: (1) students from middle class backgrounds are less able to afford unpaid internships; and (2) the higher class career paths are more likely to be winner-takes-all, and therefore it is crucially important to get on the right track in order to avoid being left behind. On the other hand there is an opening for every single qualified nurse so there's no need for nursing students to further enhance their resume.

Comments

[Peter]

Very good analysis, though as the husband of a newly minted nurse I'll point out that nursing is a bit different from the other "low class" fields especially I.T. and engineering. While more men are getting into nursing, it still remains overwhelmingly female and isn't likely to change signficantly - out of the 40 or so graduates in my wife's nursing school class, there were only four or five men (I don't remember which). I.T. and engineering are getting an increasing number of women but remain predominately male fields. Nursing also is popular among midlife career-changers; a causal observer at my wife's graduation ceremony might've mistaken it for the nursing school's 20th reunion :) As far as I know that really isn't true for I.T. and engineering.

[tc]

"Upper class professions are more verbal, while lower class professions are more numerical."

I don't think this is true. Professors, scientists, and doctors are also "upper-class", but if you look at the graduate schools there are plenty of foreign students. My guess is that language matters, you don't need to be fluent in English to be a programmer but it's a must for lawyers.

[Half Sigma]

Peter, there are actually lots of people in I.T. who tried other careers that didn't pan out and then moved to I.T. because they needed a practical career where they could earn a living.

Unlike other careers with educational barriers to entry (the government won't allow you to be a lawyer unless you spend three years in law school), anyone can jump right into I.T.

It's possible that I.T., relative to nursing, is harder to pick up when your brain gets older.

[Robert Hume]

One problem with importing and outsourceing engineering and IT is that they are critical to our leadership as a nation. And we are the best in the world at them and it may well be genetic.

So when we have others doing that work the standard will lower and the world will suffer. Also the US will decline relatively because engineering and IT are the key to all the rest. The lawyers and journalists are the tail on the dog.

Isn't it ironic that the high class professions; lawyers and journalists are the least needed.

[Come On]

"And we are the best in the world at them and it may well be genetic."

LOL

Yes, I think they have recently discovered the 'Java programming' gene, it's right next to the 'Cisco router configuration' gene. In a couple years, we will be able to bioengineer our children to not only have blond hair and blue eyes, but also be able to write a front-end web application by the time they get out of diapers!

[Peter]

"It's possible that I.T., relative to nursing, is harder to pick up when your brain gets older."

Quite possible. I'm not in I.T. myself but it's my understanding that most such jobs involve the absorbtion and analysis of technical information, the sort of skillset that tends to decline with age. Nursing involves technical information too, but it also involves a great deal of interaction with other people, and that's a skill that does not decline much if at all with age.

[Lurker]

Accountants and lawyers may be upper class generally and even have their uses but essentially they are unproductive private sector bureaucrats and their numbers should culled ruthlessly.

[SciFiGeek]

A couple of addenda, though I do not disagree with the arguments about class power.

You're describing lawyers as a unitary upper class group. However, there's a big difference between Harvard grads and UMass grads in opportunities and income. It's irrelevant to discuss immigration affecting the opportunities of lawyers in the elite, because even if we were importing lawyers, we wouldn't be importing *Harvard* lawyers. So they're not worried about that.

Similarly, investment banks only recruit from a few b-schools. So immigration wouldn't affect matters there. We thus can't really know if a sudden increase in wages in these professions would lead to calls for immigration (though I bet you're right that it wouldn't), because it wouldn't help anyway due to the snootiness of the firms.

Also note that many high-class 'professions', as you say, are pyramidal and unequal. I think the issue is less one of snobbery towards people in relatively equal professions than of the power of the individual groups of people who are successful in the high-class professions. There are lawyers and lawyers, in other words?

Also note that unpaid internships are rife in areas like journalism, academia, and publishing which aren't particularly classy and barely pay anyone well.

Can anyone comment on medicine? It seems relatively equal (even the people at the bottom make OK money) and seems to have pretty good status...I know they've filled it with foreigners when necessary.

[The Superfluous Man]

tc, if pyramidal pay structure defines the upper class, then professors, scientists and (less so, and it probably varies) doctors are not upper class.

But what about say Indian entrepeneurs. This "profession," far more so than law, is of a winner take all nature. Our lawmakers do not hesitate to let such people into the country. I read that in India, engineering is the most prestigious profession, followed by medicine and law. It may be that a society defines as most prestigious that which it excels at (echoing Tom Wolfe's idea of fiction-absolute, that "each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world – so ordained by some almighty force – would make not that individual but his group, the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles.")

Lurker, I agree, but they exist because there is demand for them. But this demand is superficial - it is produced by the bureaucratic laws created by the very same lawyer-lawmakers. Richard Epstein (a libertarian legal theorist) advocates the simplifying the laws in Simple Rules for a Complex world, thereby reducing the number of lawyers (and presumably accountants too). He argues that there is an optimal amount of lawyers, as evidenced by their stable proportion of the population until the 60's. Also, there are lawyers needed even if there were no government (not that I advocate such), such as those in contract law.

"And we are the best in the world at them and it may well be genetic."
Northeast Asian countries have the highest average IQ. (Admittedly, the top fraction matters more than the average, so the USA may still have an edge in the genetic regard.) But the kicker is that certain NE Asian countries, particularly China and even Singapore, could well enact eugenic policies to rapidly raise their respective IQ. Additionally, there are a shortage of females in China. I suspect this will have a eugenic (as opposed to dysgenic) effect, as the Chinese women will try and find the best mate, locking the male dregs out of the marriage market. By the way, East Asians score (I believe) slightly below Whites in the verbal component of IQ, but higher in the other components. Ashkenazi Jews, on the other hand, score highest on verbal ability, validated by their high representation in said high class professions like law, film, journalism, etc.

ScifiGeek, importing foreigners would have, if not an immediate effect, one after a generation. Past some threshold, the white shoe law firms will want you. So it's not a matter of how many seats Harvard has, but the number of Harvard quality wannabe lawyers among us. Harvard has not discovered alchemy yet(the process of converting lead into gold). Or it may be that said firms need a static amount of people, even if quality improves. Either way, (highly skilled) immigration would increase competition for these jobs.

[Peter]

"You're describing lawyers as a unitary upper class group. However, there's a big difference between Harvard grads and UMass grads in opportunities and income."

I guess it would be an infinite difference, as the University of Massachusetts doesn't have a law school :)

[superdestroyer]

Sigma, I really like your analysis.

One thing to remember about jobs with unpaid internships is that they are probably to be in fields that do not depend on credentials. The reason nursing, pharmacy, engineering, and much of medicine does not have unpaid interns is that the only thing that matters is the individuals license to practice. A graduate of Georgetown University School of Nursing does not make anymore money than a graduate of of East Tennesse STate once they start working. Thus, in nursing the alma mater is relatively unimportant. What is important is the nursing license. The same goes for professional engineers, and probably goes for certification programs in IT.

Yet, in journalism, the media, publishing, and non-profits, there is no clear cut credential that signals a base line competence. Thus, where an individual went to schools, one's family connections, their unpaid internships,etc become much more important. If you look at many online essays written up the children of the upper class, there are many complaints that their BS in Art History from an Ivy wannabe does not get them an interview when they fill out the on-line application at Booz-Allen, etc.

If you look at the upper classes in the US, they run away from career fields that depend upon a baseline credential and like fields with unclear qualifications.

Look at how the private college prep schools have dropped their AP/IB classes once the upper middle class at the suburban public schools started offering them. The same goes for college degrees. Once the upper middle class started going to graduate school and getting professional degrees, the upper class started the push toward unpaid interships.

The thing to do know if to figure out what the next signal will be to separate the upper classes from the middle classes.

[Russ]

I think you're right that "high class" professionals bristle at the possibility of "low class" professionals making more money than they do, and therefore encourage immigration to induce a more "natural order".

In the absence of immigration as an adjuster, journalists, lawyers, and other white collar bureaucrats will turn to regulation and taxation as an income adjuster.

I think we have a case of picking our poisons, then.

[The Superfluous Man]

Superdestroyer, only a small portion of engineering is licensed - civil engineering work done for the government. And I'm not so sure that Penn nurses make as much Penn State ones (I found some statistics for the former, but not the latter -http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/nursing/sonsurvey99.html). We can agree that law is, in the right firms, a high class profession. But it is a credentialed one. This credential does indicate a "base line competence," but that is insufficient for the upper class law positions. The upper class isn't against licensing - it's just that licensing is never exclusive enough. (The class of the profession of medicine varies I suspect).

Russ, journalists have always made little compared to law, medicine et al.

The ruling class doesn't want competition - illiterate Mexicans pose little threat. The greatest threat landed decades ago, from the ghettoes and villages of Eastern Europe. They have since entered the upper class. They may then argue against skilled immigration as 'brain drain.'

[Mark Seecof]

A man can still rise into the American upper class by talent or good looks. However, any man who does rise faces the usual problem: he wants his offspring to do well, but reversion to the mean suggests that many of them will be less talented (or good looking) than he is (or his wife).

What's he to do? He can't change his kids' innate talents, but he can give them fancy educations, introduce them to other rich people at the country club, and make calls on their behalf.

Naturally then, upper class parents favor careers for their children which depend more on connections than talent. Talent is all very well, but the top jobs in most fields (like those top lawyer jobs) are social, not technical. People with "sales ability" may rise into them by making connections the hard way. Upper-class younglings can get them by exploiting connections they get from their parents.

Unpaid internships are a natural for upper-class youth. The parents favor them because (a) getting one depends on social connections more than talent, (b) only kids with rich parents can afford them, (c) the main point of the internship is for the intern to make or reinforce connections.

Second- or Nth- generation rich people know what to do... they strive to perpetuate the system for their own offspring, using any talent they possess for intra-class competition, and doing their best to exclude upstarts from the middle class who might displace the children of the current upper class.

The study of upper-class manners, mores, and career choices throughout history reveals the same concern with (and the same approaches to) passing the rewards of unusual talent down to unexceptional children.

[probligo]

"Accountants and lawyers may be upper class generally and even have their uses but essentially they are unproductive private sector bureaucrats and their numbers should culled ruthlessly."

HEY!! I RESENT THAT!!

As an ex- IT (from the time when computers were just losing their diapers - nappies in NZ) who became an accountant as a second choice I would agree about lawyers.

Culling ACCOUNTANTS!!??????!!!??

Just wait until your next tax return is due. I'll let the boys know...

[burritoboy]

Ok, potential solutions to the conundrum come from the following sources:

1. Unpaid internships are especially prevalent in fields with very high cultural capital but comparatively low monetary capital - i.e., politics, intellectual magazines, media, the arts, etc.

see Bourdieu for explorations of the topic

2. Fields very high in monetary capital do not use unpaid internships (since that would signify that they are cheap and thus cannot hire the best people). Thus, while investment banking, law firm and management consulting internships are considered very desirable, they also are generally well-paid internships.

again, see Bourdieu

3. the status of professions or fields changes, and can change fairly rapidly.

Some of this is driven by conflict within corporations as to who should control the firm (see Neil Fligstein's The Transformation of Corporate Control).

Fligstein also shows that ideological changes (i.e., HOW everybody thinks firms in general should look like) can have an impact.

4. Status is also affected by the point in the life-cycle your economy is at (note: not the business cycle, the life-cycle). If your economy has a lot of growing or new value-added industries, the status jobs are generally engineering and product design. After a time, marketing, advertising and sales become high-status, as your economy moves from simply growing through additions of new products to trying to differentiate through marketing. Later, the high-status fields become financialized as the economy matures.

5. Different countries naturally have different ideologies about how firms should look like - Germans legitimize leadership as highly technically competent, so leaders are generally PhD-level scientists or economists; Japanese legitimize leadership as a body of long-term managers who know the totality of the business, so leaders are long-term managers who have been rotated around the company for decades; the French legitimize leadership as especially brilliant intellects and diplomatic talent, so leaders are leading graduates of the polytechniques. Americans legitimize leadership as personal charisma + certain resume items, so leaders look a certain way + have hit certain known targets in their past (had a major managerial position at a short list of firms, etc) + educational attainments (but not like the educational attainments of the French or Germans).

[bbartlog]

I agree with the broad general outlines of your thesis, but on the other hand at the very high end (corporate CEOs of huge companies) you have overrepresentation of both ex-Marines and holders of science/engineering degrees, which doesn't quite square with the rest of it. Granted, this only means that the path to some handful of upper-class jobs is non-standard.