Who are the OccupyWallStreet protesters / the 99percent?

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While our media focuses on the drum circles and dread locks, here’s a survey of who actually comprises those Americans who are sympathetic to and/or active in the OWS protests:

Who are the Occupy Wall Street protesters / the 99 percent? (via: con-tem-plate)

Who are the protesters? The media calls them hippies or rich kids or slackers or yuppies. The protesters call themselves the 99%…the people who are in the bottom 99% income bracket in the United States. The top one percent of the country earns 35% of the wealth. The top 10% of the country earns over 70% of the wealth. The rest of us get the scraps. Presumably, the 99% would represent every demographic, including those in the upper incomes.

Hector R. Cordero-Guzman, Ph.D., School of Public Affairs, Baruch College Ph.D. Programs in Sociology and Urban Education City University of New York, examined data from the web traffic at occupywallstreet.org.

Traffic on the Occupy Wall Street site averaged about 400,000 visitors a day during the sample week (October 7th), which represents more than 10% of the population. 1619 people completed the survey.

  • Age: Not surprising, nearly 2/3 of the protesters are under 35. But one in three is over 35 and one in five is over 45.
  • Education: Only 7.9% of respondents lack at least some college. 27.4% have some college (but no degree), 35% have a college degree, 8.2% have some graduate school (but no degree), and close to 21.5% have a graduate school degree.
  • Employment Status: 70% of respondents had jobs. 50.4% worked full time. 20.4% worked part time. Only 13.1% are unemployed.
  • Income: 47.5% of the sample earns less than $24,999 dollars a year and another quarter (24%) earn between $25,000 and $49,999 per year. 71.5% of the sample earns less than $50,000 per year. 15.4% of the sample earned between $50,000 and $74,999. The remainder 13% of the sample earn over $75,000 with close to 2% earning over $150,000 per year.

Racial / ethnic background, politics: Read more…

With those facts in mind, consider this:


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The coverage of OWS has been another media fail, essentially.