Are blue-collar workers more optimistic about their futures than the workforce as a whole?
That’s the surprising conclusion of a new survey conducted by the Harris Poll and commissioned by Express Employment Professionals, finding that 85 percent of America’s blue-collar workers see their lives heading “in the right direction.”
Sixty-nine percent of blue-collar respondents said their local communities “are heading in the right direction,” and 51 percent said the same about the country as whole. That is twelve percentage points higher than the percentage of all Americans who say the country is heading in the right direction (39 percent), at least in last month’s Harvard-Harris Poll polling average.
The national survey of 1,049 blue-collar workers was conducted online by the Harris Poll between July 9 and 23 and includes a lot of pleasantly surprising results.
Fifty-five percent say they are better off now than they were five years ago, 20 percent say worse, and 26 percent say they’re doing about the same.
On average, U.S. blue-collar workers told the survey they had been working for a total of 22 years and in their current jobs for approximately ten years. Under-employment appears to fading. Just 8 percent said they worked less than 30 hours a week; 13 percent said they work 30 to 39 hours per week; 40 percent said 40 to 49 hours a week, and 19 percent said they worked more than 50 hours a week. A vast majority of 80 percent said they were paid hourly, 15 percent said they were salaried, and 5 percent said they weren’t sure. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of respondents said they had a pay increase in the past year. Another 45 percent reported receiving more responsibilities in the past year, and 35 percent reported receiving a promotion in the past year.
Other surprisingly optimistic results were that 80 percent of respondents agreed that “the harder you work, the more successful you will be,” and 70 percent agreed that “the American dream is alive for people like me.”
But respondents said their lives are not without its challenges or financial insecurities. Fourteen percent said they currently have no money saved in case of an emergency, and another 48 percent say they had a sum between $1 and $4,999 saved.