The Chinese American Urban Lower Working Class

Mike Liu
6/9/08

API Movement recently conducted some analysis of the Chinese working class to contribute to the recent conference of grassroots organizations organizing this sector. This analysis focused on Chinese workers in three cities - San Francisco, Boston, and New York. Los Angeles has been included for comparison.

Based on federal and city government data, particularly 2000 census data (and their limitations), the analysis tried to estimate the size of Chinese American population in the lower working class and ruling class. The analysis found that urban Chinese tended to worst off than the population as a whole, and that Chinese workers in these populatioins were focused in the same industries in each city. These industries were hotels and food services, health and education, and manufacturing..

Income
San Francisco reflects these trends. Its Chinese population has a median family income of 47.6K vs. 55.2K for total population, while the Chinese poverty rate was 10% versus 11.3% for the city's population. Its household income distribution roughly follows city population as a whole. Data for the other cities can be found here. Boston is significant for the large gap between income and poverty and the city as a whole.

Education
To determine class, sociologists typically also look at educational and occupational data in addition to income. Marxists look at people's relation to production, but data for that is difficult to find. Looking at educational data, San Francisco Chinese are significantly more disadvantaged. For those 25 years of age and older, 40% of Chinese have less than a high school education compared with 19% of the city population and 27% have at least a college education compared to 45% of the city population. Data for the other cities can be found here. Again Boston is significant for the large gap in educational attainment between its Chinese American population and that of the city as a whole.

Size of the lower working class and upper class
How to determine who belongs to the working class is in a post-industrial, hegemonic nation is another issue. Most grassroots organizations that are focused on the Chinese American working class direct their work toward the lower working class of primarily immigrant, lower-status occupations. As an initial analysis, API Movement simplified its focus to this lower sector of the working class,From this perspective the lower stratum of the Chinese American working class is between 50-65% of the Chinese adults in each city.

The criteria that we used were that they have less than a college education and are at less than twice the poverty standard and are not employed in managerial or professional occupations. Federal poverty standards are ridiculously low; for example, a family of four making $17,000 in 1999 would not be considered poor. Based on this, for the following cities, we estimate the following percentages of Chinese in the lower working class:

Comparatively, only about 23% of the population in these cities met the same criteria.

On the other end, though there is a significant college educated population, only about 2% make 200K or more.

Industries
The highest concentration of SF Chinese Americans were found in the Leisure and Hospitality industry i.e hotels and food services (17%) followed by Manufacturing (15%) and Education, Health and Education industries (14%). The last probably represents a significant professional class as well as Chinese workers in universities and hospitals. Chinese were absent from the largest industries in the city - professional and technical services, trade, and government. Proportions for Chinese in other cities can be found here.

Working Among the Chinese Working Class
While conventional U.S. wisdom may be unaware of it, this analysis confirms the need for grassroots organizations' significant work among the lower Chinese American working class in many spheres. They are already organizing around working conditions, housing, health and youth. However, to win the majority of the Chinese American population, this work will require build alliances with other sectors of the community.

© Mike Liu