NYC NOW - What Does "Working Class" Actually Mean in New York City?

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

The Democratic Socialists of America, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's political home, defines working class as anyone who depends on a paycheck to live. By this logic, that includes doctors, programmers, and waiters all under the umbrella. But do everyday New Yorkers agree? WNYC and Gothamist reporter Liz Kim joins us to unpack DSA's "working class" growth, and New Yorkers' answers to how they define working class themselves. Photo: Michael S. Santiago/Getty Images -Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre. I would say a doctor who's making $400,000 plus is in economic reality much, much closer to a waiter than they are to Jeff Bezos. What do a doctor, waiter, and programmer all have in common? No, seriously, this isn't a joke. They're all members of the working class. according to the DSA. On today's episode, we look at why the Democratic Socialists of America are redefining what it means to be a working-class voter in New York City. But before we get into that,

here's what we're following. New York and New Jersey are among nearly two dozen states suing the Trump administration to block a new federal rule that they say undermines the Affordable Care Act. The rule, which would affect next year's health plans, includes expanded access to so-called catastrophic plans. Those are the plans that offer limited coverage for low premiums, with high out-of-pocket costs. The New Jersey Attorney General alleges that the rule will make health insurance more expensive and harder to obtain. Federal officials have previously said that the rule lowers consumer costs and gives states more control over ACA health plans. Subway ridership in New York City is up. The same is true for the commuter railroads. However,

the number of fares the MTA has collected from bus riders has dropped since Mayor Zora Mamdani took office at the beginning of the year. The agency's revenue from bus fares is down more than $30 million compared to this time last year. MTA chair, Jan Alibra says Mamdani's unfulfilled campaign promise to make the buses free isn't helping the situation. Nelson Ramirez lives in Harlem and he says he skips the fair all the time because he can't afford it. There's no money. That's the problem. Nobody has the money, including me. So that's why it's like we take chances.

The MTA has deployed several Eagle teams to check whether people have paid the fare, and it plans to ramp up enforcement. A spokesperson from Mayor Mumdani says he's still pushing for free city buses. Are you someone who doesn't take public transit because you're living the good life with your car? Well, honestly, if it were really the good life, there will be no alternate side parking. Or maybe just once a week, because I do support Clean Street. While that's become a reality for some drivers in Brooklyn, a pilot program in Prospect Heights is cutting alternate side parking to a single day each week.

Rachel Friedman owns a car in the neighborhood. She says many drivers were just paying the tickets instead of moving their cars. The incentive to move will be there, and so it will actually get cleaned once a week versus what's happening now where so many cars are being left and people are just eating the cost of the ticket, that it's not actually getting clean. But maybe drivers will move once a week, Rachel adds. Here's the one-day-a-week rule. Look at the existing street sign and follow only the second day listed.

For example, signs that say Tuesday and Friday, move your car on Friday only. Tuesday is skipped. Street signs will not change during this pilot program. It's one of those things, if you know, you know. The pilot runs through September 25th. If camping is your thing, here's some news for you. Registration is now open if you want to go camping with Urban Park Rangers in Manhattan and Staten Island later this month. The program offers free camping for families, but is only available through

a lottery. If chosen, campers would spend a night in Central Park near the entrance at West 106th Street in Central Park West or in Blue Herron Park on Staten Island. Registration ends this Thursday. You can register online at the NYC Parks Department's website. The Democratic Socialists of America has a new inclusive definition of working class. After the break, we discussed the political implications behind and who's included in the group. Stick around for the conversation. Welcome back. What do a doctor, a waiter, and a programmer have in common?

No, this is no bar joke or anything. I'm serious. Take a real guess. Well, all three of these people are working class in the eyes of the Democratic Socialists of America, or the DSA. The DSA's New York City chapter has grown rapidly since member Zoraam Dani became mayor.

Their platform centers on taxing the rich to improve the lives of the working class. And they have a big tent definition of working class that covers pretty much anyone who depends on a paycheck to live. WNYC and Gothamist reporter Elizabeth Kim has reporting on this story, and she asked some regular New Yorkers how they define working class. Liz, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Janay. So you reported this month that new DSA members are taught in orientation sessions to think of anyone who works for a living as working class. What are the politics behind such a broad definition like this? Well, the DSA is a left-wing political organizing group,

and they want to frame the class struggle as between workers and billionaires. I would say a doctor who is making $400,000 plus is, in economic reality much, much closer to a waiter than they are to Jeff Bezos. That's the co-chair of the DSA's New York City chapter, Grace Mousser. And you hear her arguing that working class isn't about the kind of job you have necessarily. It's about whether your livelihood depends on your own labor. In other words, do you live off a paycheck? There are people in DSA who are, let's say, programmers for Google, who make really significant salaries.

And for us, because those people are using their labor to enrich someone above them, you know, the owner of Alphabet, they are still working class. And the reason this framing is important is because the DSA is trying to build a business. coalition of people who understand themselves as workers. You hear a lot about big tent politics. Well, this is a version of that. Yeah. Now, we know that New York's DSA chapter has more than doubled its membership numbers since Mamdani launched his campaign last year. Do we have any recent data on which types of New Yorkers have been fueling the membership boom? Well, according to a recent New York Times article, the current membership is roughly 15,000 people and that's spread across the city. And it's most often concentrated in

gentrified neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. In Queens, it's the so-called commie corridor, along with parts of Upper Manhattan. Now, the knock on the DSA is that, and this goes back, you know, many decades, is that it has historically been mostly white. The New York City chapter says that they have made strides in diversity. What does that diversity look like today? They point to a growing list of DSA members in political power that are people of color, beginning with Mayor Zora Mamdani. In Congress, there's AOC, who's Latina.

Most recently, the two DSA candidates who won their Democratic primaries for Congress, Claire Valdez is another Latina, and Daryliza Avila Chevalier, who is Afro-Legener. And that's just to name a few. You know, Liz, I really want to know, like, what are some of the trends contributing to the DSA's popularity? Because I've been traveling a lot lately. And when I tell folks that I live in New York, everyone's asking me about Zoramam Dani. Is it Zoram Dani? Is he leading to this popularity?

Well, Jene, yes. You know, the DSA is Mamdani's political home. But I would say it's more than just Momdani's affiliation with the DSA. It's also, it's both his message and their message that is resonating with New Yorkers, particularly young New Yorkers, who come to this city and are struggling to afford it. Just to give you some statistics. As of March, the unemployment rate among people with bachelor's degrees, ages 22 to 27, was at 5.6% in the first quarter. Now, that's up sharply from the pandemic.

New York State has one of the lowest home ownership rates in the country. Only half of all adult residents and a quarter of those under 35 are homeowners. And according to Street Easy, the citywide median asking rent is almost $4,000 a month. That's an increase of over 8% compared to last. last year. So there's less economic mobility. But does that mean that a college graduate has the same perspective as a manual worker without a college degree? Well, that's a good point, Jane. Not everyone agrees that economic hardship means we're all in the same boat. The young doctor who's saddled with loans and the blue collar worker may be, in a sense, experiencing aspects

of the affordability crisis. But they don't have the same level of financial vulnerability. Someone who earns $400,000 doesn't have the same perspective of somebody who is barely making $18 an hour, right? I spoke with Henry Garito, the executive director of DC 37. That's the city's largest municipal union. He said he understands how widening income inequality has led to this kind of frustration,

among even higher income earners. But he's pushing back on the notion that they should all be considered working class. In New York, you can make $100,000 and still barely making it, paycheck to paycheck based on the cost of leaving. But the perspective of somebody who's making that kind of money will never be the same as somebody who's struggling to make a decision not just from paycheck to paycheck, but the decision to do I pay for food on the table or do I pay for medicine? You know, I'm curious about how everyday New Yorkers that you spoke with Liz define working class. And before we get there, I want to go back to an episode that we did on the podcast about filmmaker Miran Nyer. She is the mother of Zoramam Dani.

And, you know, his dad is a prominent academic at Columbia, both. pretty good jobs, right? I wonder, do you have any idea if the mayor describes himself as working class? Well, we know that the mayor of New York City makes around $260,000 a year. And in a recent interview with the New York Times, he was asked if he'd consider someone making over $250,000 a year to be working class. So someone making $250,000 a year's working class? I mean, I haven't sat at home and asked myself where it starts and stops. What I would say is for those who are working to try and afford the basic dignities of life and aren't able to do so, I think that that is also a working class. The mayor later made remarks that, you know, he hasn't met any New Yorkers who are concerned that the, whether the mayor of New York City makes too much. And he's been upfront about the fact that he did grow up with privilege.

In general, you know, he doesn't seem to want to dwell on a definition, but he says the bigger point is that this new definition of class reflects a widening sense of struggle in New York City, which is arguably what propelled his winning campaign. He united a diverse group of New Yorkers, think about the bodega owners and the taxi drivers and young recent graduates, some of whom just moved to the city. And he did that by pledging to make life in the city more affordable. Liz, how do you define working class personally? I mean, for me, I've always thought of it as folks with blue-collar jobs, you know, janitors, waitresses, retail workers. What about you? I've come to think about it as being quite complicated, right?

Clearly, going beyond the archetypes of working class is an effective way to build solidarity among a diverse group of voters. But for policymakers, understanding the levels of financial need is important when you're making spending decisions. The free buses versus the expansion of fairfares is a classic example. Should the government subsidize buses for everyone? Or is it better to prioritize that spending on those who are the poorest and arguably need it the most? It's the same with taxation. Should people who earn more pay more in taxes? Certainly progressives like the DSA and the mayor say yes. But here's the tricky part. Where do you draw the line? The mayor says $1 million. But you can say should it even be that high? Should the so-called quote-unquote working class

Google engineer also be subject to a hike? And then there's also this issue of cultural capital, which I think has been downplayed and hasn't really been talked about enough. A plumber and a doctor can make the same in salary. But you can also argue that they don't have access to the same network or opportunities as one another. But what struck me about this story, Jane, is just how contested the term is. And I discovered that just by going out on the streets and talking to New Yorkers, many of whom were struggling to define the term working class. Brenda Mara is 48.

She lives in Brooklyn. And for her, working class is about how many hours you're putting in just to stay afloat in this city. I guess I'm a working class. I guess if you have to work five, six, seven days a week, I think that's a working class. If you cannot afford to be able to travel comfortably without renting your place or without having to work extra jobs, I think that's a working class. I asked her if she thinks she'll ever make it out of the working class.

For me, that's the only time I'll reach that is when I retire. I talk to Mike James. He's 28, and he considers himself working class and defines it as being a wage slave. Working class is slavery. That's it. Do you consider yourself working class? Yeah, absolutely.

Is it something that you're proud of? No, not at all. Both Brenda and Mike say that you need to be making over $100,000 to be comfortable in the city. Mike said $300,000. Someone else I spoke to in Fort Green, Orlando Thompson says his situation barely fits into any of these definitions. Would you define yourself as working class? Sometimes I wouldn't define myself as even working. He's been a freelancer.

for more than two decades. But now it's just whatever you can do to get by, which is gig economy. I don't know. What makes it different from middle class? What is middle class? Is there still like a middle class? You're like we're all struggling.

I also caught up with Kathy Lou Moser. She's 72 and retired and says the whole framework feels out of date to her now. People who did sanitation or clear a question. work or secretarial above entry level, but it was defined more by their income, I think, than their job. And what do you think it means today? Are we even on a class system? Because some people are highly educated and they're only making, you know, 45, 50,000 a year. The last couple people I'll mention were in an interesting spot. Jobin, Vafar, and Nidishankar are both 28. They're two dentists. They're two

dentists who just finished school, but they're currently unemployed. I asked them what class they say they are. I would say part of the middle class. If someone had to ask me next year when I'm working. Maybe upper middle. One day. After we get out of debt, upper middle. So they were pretty aware of their own class mobility here in New York. But even still, when I asked them how they define working class, they couldn't come to a consensus. I would say I feel like middle class. maybe make a little bit more than the working class, different types of jobs, like blue collar versus white collar. Like, how is their life different?

I feel like working class is more like manual labor-based. It's the type of job you have is a working class? I don't know. Okay, interesting. Maybe not. What do you think? What's the answer? What's the right answer?

I think I left this talk even more confused, Liz. You're welcome, Jenae. We bring the hard conversations to our audience. Yeah, I think one New Yorker you spoke to put it best, I'm just trying to stay afloat. That's WNYC's Elizabeth Kim. Thanks a lot, Liz. Thank you, Jeney. And thank you for listening to NYC Now.

You can check out Liz's reporting on our new site, Gothamus. See you next time.