I'm actually going against the grain here ... I agree with you @EggDaisy . I also agree with you and a few other posters that people ask because they want to know what you do, to evaluate you and decide if you're 'worthy.' And there IS an unconscious bias and they will judge you and they do judge you. For some it IS just a conversation thing, but some do judge. And they want to know so they can judge you.
Like another poster said, a woman asked what she did and when she said 'I worked for the government' or whatever, she still wanted to know 'but what do you actually do?' They will judge and do judge.
No matter what anyone says, if you're a stay-at-home-mum (SAHM) or a part time working mum, or part time working non-mum, who works say 12-20 hours a week at B&M you have 5 GCSE's; you will be thought of as 'lesser' than if you've got a masters degree and you work high up in finance, or medicine, or law, or in the government, and you've got 50-100 people working beneath you.
It's particularly galling and jarring for people who are long term sick or are long term unemployed, (or even SAHMs.). Basically, people who don't have an actually working paid job. 'Because they have to start explaining to these people, why they're not contributing to the workplace/to society. (That's what they see SAHMs as, freeloaders who don't contribute to society, and THEY are bankrolling them.) OR they see them as a cocklodger letting the husband 'keep' them (even worse names than cocklodger sometimes.) Even if they have children they still call SAHMs rude names, especially if they don't go back to work when the kids start school.
When I moved to a new area once. I joined this social hobby group. And I got probed again and again, probably 10 different people over the first three or four weeks. What job do I do? What do I do for a living? What CAREER am I in? If you say you don't work/are retired, then it's 'what did you USED to do?' I got so sick of explaining what I do after 10 or 12 times in 3 or 4 weeks. Did my head in it did. Not much interest in if I'm married, or how many children I have but they HAD to know what I do for a living, and how high-brow my CAREER is, and if I am a professional, and if I am someone who is on a good salary.
In addition to all this, me and DH private-rented a home for a couple of years some years ago, and I met this woman (again in a hobby group setting,) and she had seen me around the suburb, and had smiled and waved a few times... She was gobsmacked when she discovered GASP>>>! that me and my husband RENT our home. 'My gosh,' she said clutching her pearls, 'you don't look - or seem like renters.' Make of THAT what you will. Oddly, she didn't seem quite so chatty and friendly after that. Didn't want to be seen canoodling with the renty people probably. Eww 😆
My DH has actually got quite an ordinary admin job, only four days a week, and he absolutely loves it. It pays OK, it's got no real responsibilities, and he has turned down several chances to 'progress' because he CBA.. He is very happy where he is. But he tells people he hasn't seen for a few years, that he's actually a manager, because he doesn't want them to think he's only an admin assistant. He says doesn't care what people think, but he really does. And people do judge.