Less Than 2 Percent Of State Legislators Are From The Working Class

The share of Republicans and Democrats from working-class jobs who went on to hold seats in state legislatures remained below 2% in 2023.

In contrast, approximately 50% of the U.S. labor force is made up of similar jobs, suggesting a stark disparity between the labor force and the elected leaders who represent them.

That’s according to newly compiled data by researchers at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago, who recently completed a national study of the occupational backgrounds of state legislators.

“This is a bipartisan issue. Only about 1% of Republicans and 2% of Democrats in state legislatures are coming from working-class occupations,” said Eric Hansen, a political scientist at Loyola University Chicago, who co-authored the study with fellow political scientist Nicholas Carnes at Duke University.

“These estimates illustrate the striking disparity between Americans and the people who represent them in elected office,” Carnes said. “In principle, anyone can run for office, but in practice, the people who are running and serving are overwhelmingly drawn from America’s professional classes.” 
The complete dataset is available here (including data on the prior legislative session).

Among the findings:

• Out of more than 7,300 lawmakers nationwide, just 116 (1.6%) currently or last worked in manual labor, service industry, clerical or labor union jobs, researchers found. Only about 1% of Republicans and 2% of Democrats worked those types of jobs.

• This number represents a slight decrease from the prior legislative session, when researchers found 129 state legislators (1.8%) from working-class occupational backgrounds.

• In 2023, Alaska led the nation with 5% of its state legislature drawn from occupations that could be classified as working-class jobs.

• In 10 states, there was not a single lawmaker who currently or last worked in an occupation that could be classified as a working-class job: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

Using publicly available biographical information, the researchers collected data on the current or last main occupation held by each of the individuals serving in the nation’s 7,386 state legislative seats.

The researchers worked to identify legislators whose current or last main occupations were manual labor jobs like construction worker, service industry jobs like restaurant server, clerical jobs like receptionist, or jobs working for labor union organizations. (The research did not count business owners, sole proprietors or farm owners, but did count people employed by those groups.)

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