Ambo outlines the socio-economic classification very well ( although E is usually thought of as unemployed). This is probably what most people understand in a post-war context when thinking about what they might mean by working class, typically C2 and D. It was roughly reliable when cross referenced against income, a triangle with lowest/highest at the bottom/top, which is what made it useful.
Very different now and much more a diamond shape as “working class” incomes and standards of living have improved. As a tool for thinking about societal interaction it has become much less useful and hence more sophisticated systems are used in an attempt to aggregate people into broad groups. Fundamentally these systems are based on either individual’s characteristics and observable behaviour and/or their values and attitudes as a predictor of future behaviour. Hence the sometimes rather indirect questions. With “big data” sophisticated companies can divide their target populations into thousands of different groups, rather more than A-E!
In modern society I think the term working class, where mass, largely unskilled employment is stepwise diminished, is largely useless. Except for politicians of course who use the rhetoric of the post war period, but actually can be much more sophisticated in their use of data to target their message. In most cases anyway. It seems to me that the Labour Party not only had the wrong message but it didn’t matter because they were hopeless in understanding how and who to communicate it to. Complacency? The Islington bubble? An introverted group suffering group-think? I would be fascinated to hear the analysis assuming they have the humility to prepare any.
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