What Republicans talk about when they talk about the "working class"

Waiters and waitresses earn a wide range of income depending on how much they bring home in tips. Police officers and firefighters begin careers with modest wages, but they enjoy generous benefits, including pensions that allow for early and comfortable retirement. Steel workers, pipeline workers, and construction workers are highly skilled employees — think carpenters, welders, electricians, and operators of heavy machinery — who often earn a comfortable salary. Aside from those on the low end of restaurant and building work, these are middle-class professions leading to decent wages and benefits. Many are also independent contractors, which makes them small-business owners.

These are the people Republicans are talking about when they make appeals to the working class — and they aren’t at all the same groups Democrats are talking about when they use the same term.

What separates the two broad groups isn’t labor unionization, since service workers on the Democratic side and construction workers and police officers on the Republican side are typically organized for collective bargaining. What separates them far more is economic class. When unionized workers earn relatively low wages with minimal benefits, they lean left. When they earn middle-class or higher wages with good benefits, they lean right. (Though when workers are both middle-class and highly educated, as unionized professionals like journalists tend to be, they tilt left once again.)