working-class.

Associated with people whose livelihoods commonly depend on wage labor, especially manual or industrial work.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• working-class neighborhood
• working-class community
• working-class district

On the page

The working-class neighborhood organized a relief fund during the strike.

Her working-class community valued apprenticeships alongside university places.

A new luxury development stood where the district's working-class families once lived.

Usage notes

Primary category: setting. Class boundaries vary historically and by society; working-class does not mean poor, uneducated, or culturally uniform. Compound adjective; the noun phrase working class is related but a different grammatical use. Normally non-gradable as a social classification.