Working class and managerial-professional class counties

[Xelebes]

The counties in Edmonton's CMA are:

City of Edmonton
Leduc County
Parkland County
Sturgeon County
Strathcona County

Sturgeon County, with it having St. Albert probably will have the most government workers and managerial types. It also has Morinville where a lot of soldiers live.

Leduc seems to be more working class. I don't know too many manager types who choose to live there when just across the border and into the City is where all the wealthier manager types live. Proximity to the airport as well as being where the oil industry was first established in the Edmonton region means that it never attracted that middle class. The only town that is well-to-do in particular is Beaumont which only has that reputation because it is where the French settlers lived on the south side of the river.

[Docere]

Going through the GTA...

Toronto is home to the richest and poorest and as befitting the urban "county" is very mixed. Law firm partners and U of T professors etc. usually don't live in 905.

And from west to east:

Halton (particularly Oakville) definitely has more of a PMC bent. A good number of executives and Bay St. types like Oakville, an affluent lakefront suburb.

Peel overall has a working class profile overall, particularly Brampton/Malton (home to many people who work at the airport, assembly line workers etc.), though there's some wealthier sections near the lake and exurban Caledon.

York is home to a lot of immigrant wealth, successful entrepreneurs, techies etc.

Durham is the most middle income region with few sections that are particularly low income or wealthy. It's home to a lot of tradespeople, city workers, nurses etc. Culturally working class and has the lowest proportion of university graduates of the regions.

[Docere]

One thing I've noticed is the executive/managerial side of the PMC seems more likely to live in further flung areas, probably because law firm partners etc. have more centralized places of employment. I'm guessing you won't find many law firm partners in say King Township or Aurora though some executives live in estate type areas.

Similarly I would guess Westchester probably has more lawyers and so on in the PMC mix than say Fairfield or Morris counties.

[bobdreamz]

Originally Posted by JManc

Interesting...had no idea. Thought it was a merger this whole time. Why didn't they drop "Dade" altogether and just rename it Miami? Plenty of cities and counties with the same names; LA, Dallas, etc.

Politics as some people in the state wanted to preserve his so called legacy. What is funny is that Major Francis Langhorn Dade's Seminole war never even took place anywhere near what is Miami today & everything up to Palm Beach county used too be called Dade County.

The Miami-Dade county government sort of functions like the consolidated governments of Jax & Nashville except they never annexed any of the surrounding 35+ municipalities outside of Miami proper or the Unincorporated areas which has over 1 million residents.
Everybody pays the county taxes and incorporated cities are allowed to tax also basically to duplicate some basic services the county provides.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

One thing I've noticed is the executive/managerial side of the PMC seems more likely to live in further flung areas, probably because law firm partners etc. have more centralized places of employment. I'm guessing you won't find many law firm partners in say King Township or Aurora though some executives live in estate type areas.

Similarly I would guess Westchester probably has more lawyers and so on in the PMC mix than say Fairfield or Morris counties.

In the NYC area it's basically Manhattan employment vs. non-Manhattan employment. If you work in Manhattan you need to be near transit, and Westchester probably has the best transit of any traditional suburban county.

So, yeah, Westchester (and probably Fairfield, Nassau, and Essex) will have more Manhattan-centric employment profile than other wealthy suburban counties. Heavy finance, law, consulting, advertising, focus.

No reason to pay a premium if you don't commute into the city, so if you're a doctor in a suburban hospital or pharmaceutical executive in some suburban office park, no reason to live in a railroad suburb.

[McBane]

What is working class? It sounds sorta like blue collar but the number of blue collar jobs, particularly those higher paying union jobs, have declined in this country. But if you lump those jobs with teachers, cops, bus drivers, civil employees, non-doctor medical professionals (nurses, physicians assistants, etc.) and non-managerial white collar jobs, then I guess that's "working class"?

Even still, it's hard to generalize an entire county. The most obvious example in the Philadelphia area is Delaware County for "working class" but even that's discounting high income areas of the county, such as the Main Line towns of Haverford, Radnor, and Newtown Square.

Chester, Bucks, and Montgomery counties are too big to put in a box. These counties include a mix of suburban and rural-ish areas and varying income levels. Though, they all skew higher income.