The death of the middleclass professional spells danger for Labour

What does it mean to have a middle-class, white-collar professional job?

- Gaby Hinsliff

It used to feel like a promise, a guarantee of a life that might not always run smoothly but would at least be stable, verging sometimes even on smug. It probably meant a mortgage, the kind of job title that made people trust you, and a sense especially for those who were not born into a middle-class life - of having reached safe harbour. You wouldn't be rich, but you'd be comfortable. Perhaps just as important, you would know exactly where you stood: never top of the pile, but at least a reassuringly long way off the bottom. But what happens when those layers start collapsing into each other?

Last week, the Resolution Foundation thinktank released a technical update on the UK labour market, which noted that new graduate salaries have fallen in real terms over the past two decades by about 4% on average, while the minimum wage has risen by 60%. Though the two lines are still a long way from crossing over, for gen Z, and millennials in particular, the boundaries between white-collar and blue-collar worlds are getting blurrier.