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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

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Etymology

Origin of working class¹

First recorded in 1805–15

Origin of working-class²

First recorded in 1830–40

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

working class working-class

Like blacks, Hispanics are overrepresented in the working class, and blue-collar workers saw wages rise at faster rates than management in the years leading up to the pandemic.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2026

His Democratic rival is Bob Brooks, a former firefighter and political newcomer who positions himself as a voice for the working class.

From Barron's ● Oct. 19, 2026

He set out major new policies - not always a given on these occasions - and spoke with real emotion about his family and working class roots.

From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026

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

These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and centralized government.

From "1984" by George Orwell

Shedding his working-class Yorkshire accent during his studies, Stewart’s regal elocution won him his stage debut in 1959 in an adaptation of “Treasure Island.”

From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2026

An Air New Zealand plane from Auckland landed and soon afterwards flew out of the airport in the morning, launching a three-flights-a-week service to Sydney's largely working-class western suburbs.

From Barron's ● Oct. 26, 2026

The Mamdani housing plan focuses on building homes for working-class New Yorkers, he said, but it doesn’t do enough for the lowest-income bracket.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 26, 2026

For his supporters, Lula is a working-class hero credited with advancing workers' rights through organising strikes and lifting millions of people out of poverty with generous social welfare programmes as president.

From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026

But his patronizing advice was unrealistic for a working-class teenager.

From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock

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