*3.2. Social Structure*

As explained above, the structure of Catalan society has undergone decisive transformations in recent decades [57,58]. An examination of the distribution of social groups in the Catalan setting reveals data that complement the findings above, although the data used here to observe this distribution are inevitably more limited in scope. As explained in the Methodology section, we used the European Socio-Economic Classification, constructed on the basis of occupational categories, to differentiate between two groups: the population with jobs requiring qualifications (ESEC = 1, 2 and 3) and the rest of the population (ESEC > 3).

The data show in Figure 3 that the more qualified job categories cover slightly more than a quarter of the working population of Catalonia (27.7%, to be precise). Unsurprisingly, their territorial distribution follows a pattern similar to that of the level of higher education: the geographical area that presents the highest proportion of higher-level employment categories is the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona - obviously heavily affected by the presence of the capital city - where they have double the weight that they have in Terres de l'Ebre and Comarques Centrals. The inequalities associated with population size and the intensity of urbanization are almost identical to the values observed in the previous variable.

Once again, it is the spatial aggregation corresponding to residential segregation that presents the most striking inequalities, even more than in the case of the distribution of higher education. Whereas five out of every ten working people that live in well-off areas belong to higher qualified employment categories, in vulnerable areas, this proportion is just over 1 out of every 10.
