Polarization of Professionals? Class Analysis of Job Control in an Emergent “Knowledge Economy” D.W. Livingstone, Peter H. Sawchuk and Tracey L. Adams Abstract The literature on professionals is full of contending claims about the professionalization of the contemporary labour force versus the proletarianization of professional work. Two points are clear: first, the economic class structure of advanced capitalist economies has been shifting in recent decades with the decline of traditional working classes and growth of professional and managerial positions (Livingstone and Scholtz, 2016); secondly, prior research on professional occupations has conflated four distinct class positions relevant to professionalization and proletarianization claims: professional employers; self-employed professionals; professional managers; and professional employees (see Livingstone 2014). This paper focuses on a comparative analysis of these four professional classes and particularly on change and continuity in their differential job control.The analysis is based on a series of national surveys in Canada conducted between 1982 and 2016, and supplemented by recent surveys and in-depth interviews with engineers and nurses. Introduction Professional and managerial occupations have both become increasingly prevalent in advanced capitalist economies. Some analysts have argued that the “professional-managerial class” is becoming more influential in the development of such “knowledge economies” (Bell, 1973; Ehrenreichs, 1977). Others have suggested that as professionals have become more common and bureaucratized, their relative influence has diminished and they have become proletarianized or de-professionlized, more similar to traditional working-class employees (Derber et al., 1990; Coburn 1994). Others now note two contrasting forms of professionalism in knowledge base-economies: organizational professionalism which is a form of regulation and control of professionals’ work by a managerial hierarchy, versus occupational professionalism by which collegial groups of professionals primarily exercise their own discretionary judgement and regulate themselves guided by collegial codes of practice (e.g. Evetts, 2013, p. 788). Still others have observed increasing hybrid professional managerial roles (e.g. Noordegraaf, 2007). The basic argument of this paper is that, particularly under the impact of globalization, automation and credential proliferation, the job control of the growing numbers of professionals