Men in the American Occupational Structure since the Late Nineteenth Century.
Much historical analysis relies on occupations to situate people in the social structure.
Occupation information is often the only socioeconomic or class indicator in the historical record. Despite its importance to social and economic research, scholars have made little effort to assess how the status of occupations may have altered over time. By compiling occupation-specific income data from 1890 and comparing it to census data from 1950 and 1990, I assess how much economic status change the occupational hierarchy actually exhibited over the last century. The evidence reveals considerable continuity, with similar slow rates of change in the first and second halves of the twentieth century. In general, high and low paying jobs remained so.