Class politics in financialized economies: evidence from the United Kingdom, 1983–2019

Abstract The finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) industries of advanced economies are highly profitable and politically influential. However, like in other industries, FIRE revenues are distributed unevenly between different classes of workers. I examine the implications of these distributive patterns for individual attitudes toward government spending, inflation, income inequality, and taxes. Using large-scale survey data from the UK, I find that employees in the FIRE sector are more likely to support policies that, in principle, protect the unique sources of financial revenues than are employees in non-FIRE sectors, even after accounting for personal income levels. I also find that an employee’s class position—defined in terms of their workplace authority and professional credentials—significantly moderates these sectoral differences in attitudes. Specifically, differences are larger among managers and professional workers than among non-professional workers. I conclude by discussing how these differences may affect class political alignments in financialized economies.