[News Terms] Trump’s Zealous Supporters: the 'Prekariat'

'Precariat' refers to a social class that lives a hard life doing low-wage, low-skilled labor without stable employment. It is a compound word of the Italian word precario, meaning 'unstable,' and the German word proletariat, meaning 'propertyless lower working class.'

The term was used by Guy Standing, a labor economist at SOAS University of London, in his book Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, announcing the emergence of a new but dangerous class. In this book, Professor Standing claimed that "25% of the world's adult population is estimated to be part of the precariat."

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is surrounded by his supporters, the precariat, at a campaign rally in New Hampshire.
[Photo by AP/ Yonhap News]

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According to Professor Standing, the precariat is a concept that adds various types of special employment to the idea of non-regular workers. It refers to workers who are in a worse position than the traditional 'worker.'

Companies and employers try to freely hire and fire workers as needed to reduce costs, and the development of technology accelerates mechanization and automation of tasks. Because of this, most jobs except for hardware and software designers become unstable. Therefore, most workers fall into the precariat, performing one-time unstable labor on the periphery of machines and artificial intelligence (AI), handling temporary work that has not yet been automated.

Originally, the term precariat was limited to 'wandering urban nomads, non-full citizens such as residents (migrant workers).' However, now it is used broadly to include women tied to unstable earnings through domestic care, office workers suffering from job insecurity due to frequent department or workplace changes, salaried workers who have left their jobs, retired elderly, and young people trapped in debt.

With the upcoming U.S. presidential election in November, the 'precariat' wave is blowing strongly. Former U.S. President Donald Trump won the Republican New Hampshire primary on the 23rd (local time). Following his victory in Iowa, he is solidifying his status as the 'Republican front-runner' with two consecutive wins.

Analysts say that behind Trump's victory is the anger of his passionate support base, the precariat. The American precariat refers not only to 'unstable workers' but also to a class that feels anxious about the collapse of traditional white middle-class culture. Trump is inciting them by stimulating their anger and anxiety.

In response, President Joe Biden is focusing on women who lost abortion rights due to the Supreme Court's overturning of the 'Roe v. Wade' decision, but it seems difficult for him to surpass Trump, a master of incitement.

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