Is being a registered nursen a working class occupation

I would say anyone doing nursing assistant/auxiliary care assistant roles are working class as are NQ degree nurses.

Once they are in a promoted post eg matron or whatever they call that role now. That is call middle class.

I've been a nurse for over 30 years

I have many many letters after my name from my original training and further training I have done since

I'm now an 8b and consider myself working class , always have been and always will be .

I have worked in the NHS for many years with hundreds of nurses and they are a mixed bunch. My impression would be that most people who have gone in to nursing are from a working class background but by no means all.

The switch to uni based training and degree qualification did not make it a "resoloutely middle class" occupation as someone in the thread has claimed. There are plenty of working class people who hold degrees, including those who complete an apprentiship and access further study

The salary range is similar to that of a skilled manual workers and technicians; although the starting point on the pay scale may be below this.

I think it really depends on how you chose to define it.

Just to say, class and socio-economic group have more been about the type of work you do rather than your salary. Many obviously working. Lass roles would traditionally pay substantially note than middle class roles - for example coal miners, and offshore oil workers (who are not engineers).

TD;LR - for statistical purposes it is more complicated than the old 'class system' but if you were to apply that roughly to new statistical models nurses would be considered solidly middle-class.

This is how ONS groups occupations now, so slightly more nuanced - https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/classificationsandstandards/otherclassifications/thenationalstatisticssocioeconomicclassificationnssecrebasedonsoc2010

2.1 The NS-SEC has been constructed to measure the employment relations and conditions of occupations (see Goldthorpe 2007). Conceptually, these are central to showing the structure of socio-economic positions in modern societies and helping to explain variations in social behaviour and other social phenomena.

These have then been broadly grouped: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-the-nation-2024-local-to-national-mapping-opportunities-for-all/chapter-1-introduction#:~:text=There%20are%208%20'analytic'%20classes,and%20'lower%20working%20class'.

Nurses are in NS-SEC2. This groups also includes teachers, managers, journalists.

Using an older statistical model with Food Standards agency nurses are B (senior staff) this groups includes all doctors below consultant grade. Or C1, C1 includes police constables and primary school teachers: https://www.food.gov.uk/research/ewcb-2022-appendix-3-socio-economic-groupings

Who cares as long as they can do the job?

In my experience nursing attracts people from a variety of backgrounds. Nurses diversify into all kinds of roles so corporate roles, regulation, education as well as therapist or advanced clinical or specialist roles. They don’t always wear uniforms, you might not always know they are a registrant but they are still a nurse. Nursing can therefore offer social mobility through continuing professional development in a way that resolutely working class jobs cannot always achieve. It’s classless.

I'm a retired nurse. My last role required 2 degrees -(though clients were often shocked to hear this when they showed interest in joining the profession😂)..Many nurses now have a Masters Degree. It's one of those jobs where you can be continuously completing post grad. studies, throughout your career. However, I have never met a nurse who was not from a working class background. The salary does not match the demands of role.

Requires a uniform = working class.

Think police, firefighter etc.

You just know. There are innumerable signifiers.

It is a working class occupation because of the low pay and gruelling labour even though when you think about what the job entails and the higher education needed to fulfil the position, it absolutely shouldn’t be deemed as a working class job.

I recognise it’s also quite a dangerous to categorise occupations in classist positions as though one is held in higher regard than the other.

Does it really matter what “class” it falls into?

I have been qualified for 28 years this year, nurse practitioner and earn roughly 60k a year. I have a masters a diploma and a degree, I still consider myself working class as that was my family roots. I lead a comfortable lifestyle not rich not poor. Proud of my roots.

All classes go into nursing, from those of my very working class north east upbringing to the terribly posh double barrelled ones in some London hospitals and universities....pay hasn't kept pace with inflation though so what would once have given a very decent standard of living has all been eaten up by cost of living and a succession of mad governments with no clue.

A registered nurse is a professional who is bound by professional codes, the need to demonstrate continuous professional development, and revalidate regularly.

Would you regard a teacher as a middle class professional? Or a lawyer, or an accountant?

Class is nowhere near as clear cut as it once was unless you're royalty...

Yeah but the minimum wage makes sure that many working class and hard working class just can not progress. Class of all kinds tries to keep people down …the poor are definitely much poorer even if they are working. Much less social mobility and life aspiration in that strata. This affects life expectancy in the end by as much as ten years still in the 20th century. This is indeed a huge social failing…

Vocational careers can't be labelled in the class system surely. Like nuns or priests or teachers who defines this class business.
There's no distinction between earnings these days as many skilled workers are extremely highly paid. Industries have changed massively.

I’m starting to think we don’t really have working class and middle anymore as separate.

So now for me its non working class (people who don’t work and are not wealthy), working/ middle has merged, then we have the elite (people who may or may not work but certainly don’t need to and are wealthy).

There were always different routes to qualify and different ways to enter the profession. Working class girls without the opportunity to avail themselves an education were brought on in-house. They did an education alongside their nursing studies which is remarkable. Aptitude and and initiative were found in bucketloads amongst working class girls and plenty of what my mother would call nouse and staying power.

If we leave that filthy word class out of it…..people who care become nurses, people who connect and use their technical expertise to help people get well.

So was my grandmother and all her sisters - but they weren't grammar school girls, and all left school at 12 or 14 (the school leaving age went up), worked for 4 or 5 years, and then trained starting at 18. The studying (done in their "spare time" from the wards) was tough, and the work unrelentingly hard, but I don't think a long or extensive pre-education was a requirement.

Barristers? Judges?
I don't think nurses, either, historically or present. St Thomas' Hospital, for example, when it was a Voluntary Hospital before the NHS positively prided itself on only taking "gels" from "good families".....

Think it crosses both boundaries actually, some of my most impressive colleagues were from working class backgrounds regardless of where they’d place themselves now.

I was a registered nurse for 30 yrs and if I had to put myself in a class I’d say middle . I agree with the pp that it is about the culture of your upbringing . I had a SAH mum and an accountant dad , went to grammar school and had horses .

Just to add… I can imagine that my children will identify more as middle class due to their more privileged upbringing. I think class is more to do with the culture of how you’re raised not the money in the bank or the job you’re in.

I’m a registered nurse practitioner in ICU, masters degree, husband a higher earner 100K+. Financially stable. Still consider myself working class, as does my husband. Born and raised in a council scheme that our parents still live in. I think class is more to do with identity and upbringing. I’m proud to be working class. Couldn’t imagine describing myself as middle class.

I work with lots of nurses - I would say it's a real mix. But like teaching it's a female dominated profession and thus has a lower status. Nursing has always been female dominated but both teaching and medicine have become female dominated in the last century and there has been wage stagnation and status degradation as the percentage of women goes up.

Which is sad and a real reminder that even in 2025 society is not truly equal.