Prestige Squeeze

'What do you do?' is often the first question posed when strangers meet, as occupation reveals a great deal about both social identity and social standing or 'occupational prestige'. Sociologists have studied occupational prestige for decades, including a landmark national survey in 1965 by Peter Pineo and John Porter. John Goyder updates Pineo and Porter's work, providing a detailed comparison of their results with a similar national scale survey conducted in 2005. The results challenge the accepted view that prestige ratings are constant over time and across societies. Goyder shows that there have been some surprising changes in these ratings: instead of the expected premium on jobs in the knowledge sector, more traditional occupations - such as the skilled trades, even if they require little education or pay a low wage - have gained the most prestige. There has been a significant decrease in consensus about occupational prestige ratings and the tendency for respondents to upgrade the prestige of their own occupation is much more pronounced in the recent data. Goyder argues that these changes are a sign of the shifting nature of values in a meritocratic society in which increasing income inequality is a growing reality. Results from prestige surveys help in the construction of socio-economic scales for occupations and inform career counseling for young people and negotiations by labor unions and associations. "The Prestige Squeeze" goes beyond this to question the very nature of how we measure social equality and mobility.