Australia’s working class has not disappeared – it has changed, becoming more female, migrant and white collar, and social democratic parties must speak to its pressures before the populist right exploits them further.

We still have a large working class, but it is very different and larger than the working class of 60 years ago. The working class is now more white collar than blue collar.

The working class of about five million people in the 1960s was once employed in manufacturing, car plants and steel works.

The working class today includes care workers, nurses, teachers, retail and hospitality workers, gig workers, those working in warehouses and logistics, cleaners, security guards, healthcare support workers, agricultural and food processing workers and more. This is a very large group of workers, probably over seven million even allowing for double counting and workers with two or more jobs. It is more than working class workers of 60 years ago.

This new working class is also largely female, young and migrants.

The nature of the working class has clearly changed but the gap between capital and labour is as clear as it has ever been. There is still a sharp difference between those who own the means of production, capital, and those who only have their labour to sell. The new working class is concerned about corporate power and inequality.

As Professor David Schultz of Hamline University in the US argued in CounterPunch on 8 June, 2026 on the abandonment of class that whilst the composition of the workforce has clearly changed the grievance of labour is still alive. He says: “the worker timed on the warehouse floor does not need a seminar to be told that class is real. He feels it in his body at........

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