UK became more middle class in 2000: study

Britain became more middle class than working class in the year 2000, according to a new study released today.
Manual labour has been on the decline in the UK since then, with non-manual professions rising from 50.6 per cent in 2000 to 54.2 per cent in 2015, according to data compiled by Ipsos Mori from the UK's National Readership Survey.
In 1968, two-thirds of UK households were in the manual or lower-paid social grade bracket known as C2Des, but by 2015 the proportion of C2DEs shrunk to 45.8 per cent, the Guardian reports.
Social grading divides up UK households based on the job of the highest income earner.

The grades range from A, people in upper managerial and professional roles, to E, which includes state pensioners, casual workers and the unemployed receiving state benefits.
Individual grades are usually grouped into brackets that combine several tiers, with ABC1s roughly described to be middle class, while C2DEs are broadly working class.

Most of the change since 1968 has taken place in the middle brackets.
Skilled manual workers (C2s) used to be the grade encompassing the highest proportion of UK households.
In the early 1990s, this group was overtaken by junior managers and professionals (C1s).