Survey Variable: Occupational Status of Acquaintances

One of the key components of social capital is the status of the people that we know. Status can be measured in numerous ways, but occupation is often taken as a key indicator. Moving in the same circles as judges, military officers, and company directors is a rather different proposition than socialising with call centre workers, delivery drivers, and waiting staff. One might expect to be able to ask quite different favours of the people in those two networks, and to receive requests to do quite different things from them. As such, the survey asked respondents whether they had any acquaintances from a range of occupational types (the example occupations that were provided to illustrate each type of occupation can be found at the bottom of this post).

Figure 1 (above, using weighted data) shows that almost three quarters of people (73.1%) know someone who is employed as a professional by the state (such as a teacher or a social worker), whilst almost two thirds (65.8%) know someone in a technical or skilled manual occupation (such as a mechanic or plumber). More than half of people know someone in a traditional profession (such as solicitor or doctor), in a clerical or administrative (e.g., secretary or call centre agent) or semi-routine service (e.g., sales assistant or catering assistant) occupation, or who is unemployed.[1] The least-known occupations are senior managers and technical professionals and approaching a third of people (29.1% and 30.0% respectively) know someone in each of those areas.

None of the above indicates patterns in terms of how many people know others who are in high or low status occupation. In other words, it is not that case that many more people know someone in middle or low status occupations than in high status occupations, or vice versa. Indeed, it is likely that a large part of the reason for the variation in how many people know each type of occupation is simply how common the occupations are. There are lots of teachers and social workers but fewer senior managers, so it stands to reason that people are more likely to know someone in the former group than the latter. However, it remains to be seen whether people who know someone in certain occupations are also likely to know people in certain other occupations. For instance, it may be the case that people who know someone in one type of high-status occupation are also more likely to know people in other high-status occupations. That will be investigated subsequently but, for now, we can look at how many different occupation types people know someone from.

Figure 2 (below, using weighted data) shows that the distribution of how many different occupations people know someone from is quite flat. More than three fifths of people (62.8%) know someone from between four and different types of occupation, with more than one in twelve giving each of those answers. It is only at the extremes (knowing no-one from any of the types of occupation, or knowing someone from thirteen or fourteen of the types) that we see very small numbers. Thus, people tend to know someone from a moderate or large number of types of occupation, but few people have networks that are at the extremes of homogeneity or heterogeneity in terms of occupational status.

Type of occupation	Example occupations
State professional	Teacher, nurse, or social worker
Artist or performer	Artist, musician, or performer
Clerical or administrative	Secretary, office clerk, or call centre agent
Senior manager	Chief executive, finance manager, or military officer
Technical or skilled manual	Mechanic, plumber, electrician, gardener, or farmer
Semi-routine manual	Postal worker, security guard, caretaker, machine operator, or farm worker
Semi-routine service	Sales assistant, catering assistant, or receptionist
Routine manual	Military non-officer, labourer, porter, or cleaner
Routine transport	Bus, coach, lorry, or van driver
Routine service	Waiter or waitress, or bar staff
Middle manager	Pub, shop, bank, office, or restaurant manager
Traditional professional	Accountant, solicitor, or medical practitioner
Technical professional	Civil engineer, researcher, or scientist
Unemployed	No job (long-term unemployed)

Variable names	sc_wk_modprofstate_b, sc_wk_modprofcreat_b, sc_wk_clerical_b, sc_wk_senmanag_b, sc_wk_technical_b, sc_wk_semiroutmanu_b, sc_wk_semiroutserv_b, sc_wk_routmanu_b, sc_wk_routtran_b, sc_wk_routserv_b, sc_wk_midmanag_b, sc_wk_tradprof_b, sc_wk_research_b, sc_wk_unemp_b
Number of cases	1,405
Number of categories	2
Categories to code as missing	None
Cases to code as missing	None
Recoded variable name	sc_wk_count
Number of cases	1,405
Number of categories	11
New and old categories	Category 1 (‘Yes’) on each of the original variables was counted as 1 (i.e. indicating that the activity is done on holiday), with category 0 (‘No’) counted as zero. As such, 0 on the new variable indicates that no-one in any of the types of occupation asked about is known, whilst 14 indicates that someone in every type of occupation is known.

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[1] We cannot, unfortunately, know what people had in mind when they indicated whether they knew someone who is unemployed and this could be people who are, for instance, seeking work, retired, or stay-at-home parents.