Despite being known as Posh Spice since about 1996, Victoria Beckham claimed in a recent documentary that she actually grew up working class.
Her husband, former footballer David Beckham, scoffed on camera when she made the assertion in the Netflix documentary, titled Beckham.
"What car did your father drive?" David asks. She doesn't answer the question and he presses further until she eventually concedes it was a Rolls-Royce.
He walks out of the room having made his point. There's no discussion of the fact the pair now have an estimated US$514 million ($800 million) in wealth, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
The couple's exchange exploded online, partly because of the perfect comic timing, but it also raises questions about who is working class and what the term means now that our economy doesn't resemble the Industrial Revolution.
There's often a romanticisation and fetishisation of working-class identities and it's common that people, like Victoria Beckham, will deny being rich, senior lecturer in history and politics at Western Sydney University David Burchell told SBS News.
Many manufacturing jobs have been automated or moved overseas, changing the profile of who is working class in Australia. Source: AAP / NSW Ports
"Partly, it's just fantasising, but partly it's a sort of mythic desire to be part of the people and to think of the nation," he said.
Some people will legitimately change classes dramatically over the course of their lifetime which makes it hard to define them, he said.
One such example is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who grew up in council housing and is now the leader of a national government.
Miners in the United Kingdom pose for a photo in 1929. Source: AAP / British Pathe/Mary Evans
Where did the term working class come from?
It originally used to be used in plural - the working classes - and during the Industrial Revolution it literally meant people who worked with their hands, Burchell said.
"It goes back to the 18th and early 19th centuries, when there was a fairly clear divide between the blue-collar and white-collar workforce."
The term working class came to be defined again by German socialist intellectual Karl Marx, who theorised about the relationship between three groups in society - the aristocracy ruling class, the 'bourgeoisie' middle class, and the 'proletariat' working class.
But while Marx is considered the father of communism, being working class in Australia now doesn't bear much connection to communism, Burchell said.
"There used to be a kind of political folklore that being working class meant you were a radical left-winger. And that's never been true. In any country ever. Anywhere."
How do we define who is working class?
Defining who is working class has never been simple, but it's become much harder since advances in technology and the boom of importing products manufactured in Asia gutted a lot of traditional industries in Australia, Burchell said.
But there are indicators researchers use to ask people where they fit in different classes and sub-classes - culture, family, ancestry location, neighbourhood.
These days, many people identify their class due to factors like culture, lived experience, childhood, and family ancestry and not their occupation and income, Burchell said.
Most people look at factors beyond their occupation when considering if they're working class, according to surveys. Source: AAP / Darren England
The gig economy has meant workers like delivery drivers and rideshare drivers have joined the working classes, as their labour benefits large companies, associate professor in politics and economics at the University of Sydney Stuart Rosewarne told SBS News.
Working class people traditionally were "in a structured workplace, and formed unions to try and improve their working conditions", Rosewarne said.
By this definition, a lot of small business employees could be considered middle class because of the additional autonomy they have over their work and income, he said.
But when it comes to big businesses, like large supermarket retailers, some of the management and bosses will be part of "the capitalist class making millions", Rosewarne said, but the employees working in stores will be classified as working class.
The music and entertainment you consume may also reflect your class identity, head of communications and media at Monash University Anthony Moore told SBS News.
"There was a vibrant working-class media in Australia in the 19th century, with trade union radio stations and newspapers.
"We had comedy. We had rock and roll. So much of what you might call the golden age of Oz rock were people from working-class backgrounds like Jimmy Barnes, AC/DC and Skyhooks."
What kind of jobs are working class?
Working-class people increasingly work in service industries and many more women than ever before are working traditionally working-class jobs like cleaning and textile work, Moore said.
"Newly arrived migrants but also established migrant groups make up a huge amount of service workers and people in other kinds of unskilled and semi-skilled work.
"A significant number of migrants have got university degrees and (are) doing high-level professional work, but many have always been in manual work."
Tradespeople may or may not be working class, academics agree.
"When they're self-employed they may consider themselves businesspeople," Moore said, but they're not in the same position as those who have "old wealth" that can withstand shifts in the economy like rising interest rates.
But tradespeople who work manually, and have a social way of working and organising work on a job site or factory floor will likely consider themselves working class, he said.
"Public servants, who, like teachers, firefighters, nurses, and paramedics would be considered working class, they're quite unionised.
"But I wouldn't necessarily call clerical public servants working in government and policy working class. But I would say there will be people in every government department who are doing very routine administrative work of low pay," Moore said.
What percentage of Australians identify as working class?
Around 42.8 per cent of people surveyed in an Australian National University poll of 4,204 in August 2023 said they see themselves as working class.
This has hardly changed from 2015 when the same researchers asked the question and 43 per cent said they were working class.
Over eight years, the proportion of those who identify as middle class has changed slightly, growing from 54.8 per cent in 2015 to 55.8 per cent in 2023.
The percentage of people identifying as upper class dropped from 2.1 per cent to 1.4 per cent.
