What jobs in America are most likely filled by Republicans or Democrats? Does such data even exist?
It didn’t, until now. And the findings are very interesting.
Ryan Burge, a Washington University professor at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, explains a small team of researchers at a firm called Politics at Work have done a “really good” job at providing data revealing which professions tend to attract more Republicans or Democrats.
The main headline for Professor Burge is that the top line of work for Republicans is within religious organizations, and more specifically, non-denominational Christian ones. Generally, he finds, “people who worked for religious organizations are clearly the only group to the right of center” where “Republicans outnumbered Democrats by seven percentage points.” This is not surprising, given that Democrats have been growing more secular compared to Republicans over the last few decades.
But what does it mean to work in a “religious organization”? That could be almost anything: a Catholic hospital, a Muslim or Jewish organization, an historic religiously based university, or a local rescue mission or food pantry.
Burge found that Christian-based workplaces were dramatically more likely to lean Right or Republican over and against either Muslim or Jewish employers. The differentials look like this:
Burge also shows which Christian denominations lean more conservative politically. He explains, “Folks who work for Baptist and non-denominational churches are the most right-leaning, followed by Pentecostals and Lutherans,” adding, “In each case, the Republican share outnumbers the Democratic share.” Non-denominational organization employees clearly lean markedly more conservative in their politics.
His data shows that those Chrisitan employers leaning most Left are Episcopalians, Adventists and Methodists. The next closest competitors after religious organizations for most Republican-filled jobs are commercial construction and real estate appraisers, followed by insurance brokers and real estate agents.
On the Democrat-leaning employment side, Burge asks, “Is anyone shocked that people who work in higher education are 32 percentage points more Democratic than Republican?” He says the next most liberal work sectors are law offices in second and software engineers in third place. Internet services, clothing retail, media and streaming and fast-food restaurants were the other top Left-leaning job sites. Burge explains these “results align really well” with recent voting trend data for these groups.
Folks who work in aerospace manufacturing, car dealerships, insurance brokerages, engineering and the mortgage industry are the most evenly split workplaces.
These findings are not surprising as we consider that people are motivated by their core beliefs and those beliefs certainly follow us into the workplace. Biblical faith informs us in certain directions, with important beliefs and practices, standing for divinely inspired truths. These truths have political consequences – for what it means to be human as male and female, for what freedom and civic responsibility mean, for economics, national security, and the importance of the natural family – and they tend to line up with one party over the other. This is what the data presented in Professor Burge’s findings show.
Ideas have consequences.
Additional Resources
One Political Party is Clearly More Proud of America Than the Other
Data Shows Democrats Are Increasingly Secular
Research Finds Republican Husbands More Faithful; Religious Even More
