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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

Then Ronaldo saw a post on social media reporting ICE activity in the East End, a heavily Latino working class neighborhood of Houston.

From Barron's • Jul. 9, 2026

When there aren’t marriageable or even dateable men around, fewer women marry and have children, a dynamic that has been particularly pronounced in America’s working class.

From Slate • Jul. 6, 2026

Approximately 46% of the U.S. working class are women.

From Salon • Jun. 25, 2026

WSJ’s Janet Adamy explains the surprising findings of what it means to be working class in the U.S.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 19, 2026

Not that I, even in my more histrionic moments, imagine that I am a member of that oppressed working class.

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