AN insidious aspect of neoliberalism’s ideological blitz has been to convince certain parts of society that working-class people being unable to “get on” is an individual, moral flaw — some sort of gene-deep character deficiency.

Aside from being — at best — a glib display of ignorance, it also neatly sidesteps any structural analysis of class, what functions people perform in the economy and how this reproduces class privilege.

What our backgrounds are — where we come from, our access to certain social networks, what kinds of support we can access (in short, the kinds of economic, social and cultural capital we can harness) — and how these affect our trajectories, cast very long shadows.

Progress in capitalism is not always the natural outcome of effort as we have been told and privilege is a propulsive tailwind.

As Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison show in their panoramic 2020 study of social mobility in Britain, those people who come from wealthier backgrounds disproportionately get into those occupations that are more desirable, influential and, crucially, better paid. Those who start ahead are those most likely to succeed.

This argument is rehearsed often enough, and Britain is not unique in this respect. However, the power of the basic point warrants repeating: money deftly steers those who have it into clearly demarcated paths, allowing certain people to nimbly navigate those career paths that increase their chances of long-term stability and “success” (what we mean by “success” under capitalism is a debate of its own).

Those of working-class origin, those negotiating the world without the economic, cultural and social capital of their middle and upper-class counterparts face the headwinds.

Resistance to exploitative employment and the privilege of taking risky opportunities is not afforded to most people. For those mobile sections of society of working-class origin, the hurdles are much higher and more numerous.

Wales is home to some of Britain’s most deprived communities. It’s an indictment of our situation and the political actions (or lack thereof) being taken by the Labour-run Welsh government and Tory Westminster to ameliorate it that there’s a distinct “groundhog day” characteristic to Welsh news and politics.

The recurring news stories comprise a broad picture reflecting our child poverty rates, the worst of any UK nation, and communities immiserated by the worst excrescences of the austerity apparatus.

A far cry from being the fault of any one person’s supposed individual failings, the disparities in inequality are the product of a society that sorts people into those who control the economy and sit at the top end of the income distribution, and those people who work and live hand to mouth to survive.

Those that don’t or can’t are simply left to flounder. The unemployment and poverty that result are used as disciplinary measures for others: this is what will happen to you if you don’t get to work.

Poverty and high unemployment are critical areas of policy to address if we are to see any improvement in improving people’s life chances.

The work required from the Welsh government to open up the seriously constrained futures so many communities face when confronted with poverty and joblessness is far-reaching.

Work began over a year ago in Wales to deliver the Young Person’s Guarantee, an offer of support to everyone under the age of 25 to gain a place in education or training, to find a job or become self-employed.

Young people from working-class backgrounds are much more likely to need this than their middle-class counterparts, and I’m concerned that the guarantee, while providing equitable access to opportunity, does not do enough to ensure that young people from working-class backgrounds are given sufficient support to overcome the social barriers that their middle-class peers seldom encounter.

Therefore, while the guarantee is ostensibly equitable, working-class people must still contend with obstacles that those from more privileged class backgrounds would not have to.

This is a point forcefully made by organisations such as the Social Mobility Foundation. In November 2022, it launched its shocking analysis of the class pay gap in Britain today.

In Wales, the class pay gap is significant: professionals of working-class origin are paid £6,703 less than their peers from middle-class backgrounds each year.

These vary across occupations: fire service personnel of working-class origin are paid £5,229 less, solicitors £8,115 less, social workers £2,088 less — and so the list goes on.

Those from working-class backgrounds earn 13.05 per cent less than their more advantaged colleagues, meaning that they effectively work 13 per cent of the year — nearly one day in seven — for free.

I had the opportunity of sponsoring an event in the Senedd last month, welcoming members of the Social Mobility Foundation to the Senedd to discuss its fantastic work providing data on the class pay gap and delineating how the forces of classism play out in the workplace.

What was clear is that social mobility does not end at the point of occupational entry. Emotional labour, as well as physical or cognitive labour, is important to register, and speaks to an economic system couched in privilege that we must extricate ourselves from.

Luke Fletcher is Plaid Cymru economy spokesperson and MS for South Wales West.