I started with Peter Lawler’s post.

Are we dividing, maybe more than ever, into a “creative class” and a “service class?”

I followed the link to Emily Badger’s piece.

Their analysis separates workers into three classes, derived from Florida’s research: the “creative class” of knowledge workers who make up about a third of the U.S. workforce (people in advertising, business, education, the arts, etc.); the “service class,” which makes up the largest and fastest growing sector of the economy (people in retail, food service, clerical jobs); and the “working class,” where blue-collar jobs in industries like manufacturing have been disappearing (this also includes construction and transportation).

I am inclined to accuse Florida and his colleagues of using creative license in defining the occupations that constitute the “creative class.” As I stated this summer, I view the process of urban gentrification as being driven by hospitals and universities. They have the money, they are expanding in cities (during my road trip this summer, I saw this in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis), and they hire people with lots of education credentials, who then move into the city.

But these credentialed workers are not necessarily creative. They are not opening new vistas or making new discoveries or overthrowing social conventions. Many of them are administrators who, if anything, get in the way of the creative individuals in their institutions.

Look, I think that Florida and his colleagues are spot-on in their observation of the changing geography of social class. But the term “creative class” grates on me, because I think it is misleading.