They may be among the brainiest professionals in Britain, but scientists, university academics and architects are struggling to cling to the privileges of middle-class life as a super-rich elite pushes up prices for property and private education.
An analysis of wages stretching back 40 years reveals that many jobs that were considered highly lucrative in the 1970s have been eclipsed by salaries for bankers, doctors and lawyers.
Referred to as an “über middle class”, the winners in the white-collar wages race have helped to drive London property prices higher and contributed to above-inflation fee rises at top independent schools. Others, labelled “cling-ons”, have been left scrambling to match their parents’ lifestyles.
One of the study’s authors, Brian Bell, a labour market expert at the University