The Income Difference between Skilled and White Collar Workers

N RECENT YEARS, reports from various official United States government sources have shown a higher median income for the > craftsmen and foremen than for the clerical and sales groups. This information has been reproduced in sociological sources with accompanying comment to the effect that 'class lines have become blurred'. With rare exceptions such comments constitute the only discussion of the implications of a development which should be a major topic in American sociology the disappearance of a major line of social cleavage. The introductory texts of Ely Chinoyl and of George Lundberg and associates2 both present the data, the former with a comment ('class lines . . . blurred and ill-defined) and the latter with no elaboration. The text by Freedman and associates gives the median and mean incomes for 'clerical and sales) groups and contrasts them with the figures for both the 'skilled and semiskilled'. Their comment is that the Egures suggest 'only a moderate degree of class crystallization in American society'.3 A detailed compilation of the data on income trends among the manual and white-collar employees from I890 has been made by Robert K. Burns.4 Unlike the sociological works cited thus far, this article has the virtue of at least speculating about the causes of the equalization he discovers as well as venturing predictions about future trends. The two sociologists who have focused most sharply on the income reversal (or 'equalization' depending on your source) are C. Wright Mills and Kurt B. Mayer. Both have focused on the same 'fact' but have developed different theoretical implications from it. The former began by pointing to a 'narrowing of the income gap' between the two groups, an elimination of the educational differences between them, and to the consequent disappearance of any basis for a special claim to prestige on the part of the white-collar workers. As a result he predicts a 'status panic' a frarltic drive to protect the remaining bases for 363

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• The concept of working-class embourgeoisement

  Open Access•E Jelin•Studies in Comparative…•1974

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