Working-class Jews? The Jews-are-out-to-get-us crowd laughs at the idea of a working-class Jew. And I must admit that I said "Interesting" when I was watching on program about separated identical twins and was told of two Jewish boys adopted away at birth who both turned out to be firemen. And I didn't say interesting because of the tremendous coincidence of their occupations.

On the one hand, if we look at the percentage of people who made a household income of more than $110,000 in 1998, it looks like this:

Protestant 7.2
Catholic 7.9
Jewish 28.9
Hindus 17.2

So, compared to Protestant, 4 times as many Jews are rich (this is the highest category in the survey). Not too shabby, but keep in mind that less than 1/3 of Jews have a lot of money. (And Hindus dispel the myth that brown people can't make it in America).

Now what about the other end? Let's choose less than $30,000 per household as a cutoff. It looks like this:

Protestant 41.4
Catholic 30.2
Jews 18.4
Hindus 25.8

The differences are large here, but the fact remains that nearly 1 in 5 Jewish households are not earning much (and keep in mind that this group lives disproportionately in high cost-of-living areas. Also--the survey does not include college students living in dorms who have little income).

(Source: General Social Survey)