‘Lower class’ descriptor rising

LOS ANGELES – Chris Roquemore once thought of himself as working class. But it’s hard to keep thinking that, he said, when you’re not working.

The 28-year-old father said he sparred with his supervisors at a retail chain about taking time off after his mother died - and ended up unemployed. Since then, Roquemore has worked odd jobs and started studying nursing at Long Beach City College, trying to get “a career, not a job.” All those changes, in turn, changed the way he thought of himself.

Roquemore is among the small but surging share of Americans who identify themselves as “lower class.” Last year, a record 8.4 percent of Americans put themselves in that category - more than at any other time in the four decades that the question has been asked on the General Social Survey, a project of the independent research organization Norc at the University of Chicago.

The rising numbers surprised some researchers and activists even in light of the bruising economy. For decades, the vast majority of Americans have seen themselves as “middle class” or “working class.” Even during earlier downturns, so few people called themselves lower class that scholars routinely lumped them with working class. Activists for the poor often avoid the term, deeming it an insult.

When people call themselves lower class, “we’ll say, ‘You’re not lower than someone else. You just have less money,’ ” said Michaelann Bewsee, co-founder of Arise for Social Justice, a Massachusetts low-income rights group. But many don’t consider it insulting today, Bewsee said.

“They’re just reflecting their economic reality,” she said.

For many, “the feeling is that things are not likely to get better any time soon,” said Michael Zweig, director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at Stony Brook University.

Last year, less than 55 percent of Americans agreed that “people like me and my family have a good chance of improving our standard of living,” the lowest level since the General Social Survey first asked the question in 1987. An unusually high share of the unemployed – more than 4 million Americans as of August - have been out of work for six months or longer.

Jobless people have long been more likely than other Americans to call themselves lower class, but in recent years people who work at least part time have been increasingly likely to do so too. Activists say workers are frustrated as jobs with fewer hours and less pay have proliferated, a hallmark of the sluggish recovery.

“It’s not surprising if the American worker is thinking, ‘I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked, yet I’m being paid less – and I’m working two or maybe three jobs,’ ” said Lola Smallwood Cuevas, project director of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center. “It creates a feeling that you’re trapped.”