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• working class
  working class

  noun

  those persons working for wages, especially in manual labor.
• working-class
  working-class

  adjective

  of, relating to, or characteristic of the working class, the class of wage earners or manual laborers.

working class

¹ American  

noun

• working classes
  plural

1. those persons working for wages, especially in manual labor.

2. the social or economic class composed of these workers.

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working-class ² American  

[wur-king-klas] / ˈwɜr kɪŋˌklæs /

adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the working class, the class of wage earners or manual laborers.

   He came from a working-class neighborhood in Nova Scotia, where his mother took in laundry and his father had a job in the coal mine.

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working class British  

noun

1. Also called: proletariat.  the social stratum, usually of low status, that consists of those who earn wages, esp as manual workers Compare lower class middle class upper class

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adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the working class

working class Cultural  

1. In the United States, the population of blue-collar workers, particularly skilled and semiskilled laborers, who differ in values, but not necessarily in income, from the middle class. In Marxism, this term refers to propertyless factory workers.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• working-class
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• working classes
  plural

Etymology

Origin of working class¹

First recorded in 1805–15

Origin of working-class²

First recorded in 1830–40

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

working class working-class

It was the perfect environment for two blue-collar communities: San Pedro, known for its bustling port and dock workers, and Bell, known as a densely packed working class industrial city.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2026

In a statement, he added that the name of the unit posed "obvious problems of definition" and "risks being deeply patronising, to equate being working class with being disadvantaged".

From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026

They are particularly popular among white working class students, according to research by the Social Market Foundation think tank, external.

From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026

Conversely, most Americans without a college degree do not identify as working class.

From Salon ● Aug. 9, 2026

If I am now a productive fake member of the working class, it’s because I haven’t been working, in any hard physical sense, long enough to have ruined my body.

From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich

They both have steady jobs in public services — normal, working-class people like me and my husband.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 17, 2026

“Working-class women are working-class people, something upper-middle-class women often forget,” Williams said.

From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2026

Meanwhile, speaking to The Nolan Show, Fitzpatrick said she understood "working-class parents have frustrations but that's not on the back of these three and four-year-old children."

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026

Once a working-class port city, now Vlore has a beachfront lined with ritzy bars, restaurants catering to tourists, and blocks of hotels.

From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2026

White women on campus proclaimed their sisterhood with working-class women.

From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez