Cognitive Elite

aka Upper Class Symbolic Analyst

The professional-managerial class was an influential new class hypothesis in social science in the United States in the 1970s by John and Barbara Ehrenreich.[1] The Ehrenreichs hypothesized a social class within capitalism that, by controlling production processes through superior management skills, was neither proletarian nor bourgeois. This hypothesis contributed to the Marxist debates on class in Fordism and was used as an analytical category in the examination of non-proletarian employees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional-managerial_class

  • This group of middle class professionals is distinguished from other social classes by their training and education, typically business qualifications and university degrees,[2] with occupations including academics, teachers, social workers, engineers, managers, nurses, and middle-level administrators.[3] The professional-managerial class tends to have incomes above the average for their country.[4]
  • It is estimated that in the 1930s United States people in professional-managerial class occupations made up less than 1 percent of total employment. In 1972, about 24 percent of American jobs were in professional-managerial class occupations. By 1983 the number had risen to 28 percent and in 2006, 35 percent.[5]

Patrick McKenzie: Idle thought: a lot of column inches about “Tech people making products for tech people” are really about product development for the enlarged/emerging class in America which seems to be converging on the “PMC” label, which is now ~20% of households up from maybe 2%. (Silicon Valley)


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