The Linguistic Repertoires of Different Occupational Groups

1.6 The Linguistic Repertoires of Different Occupational Groups

The Poles, on the other hand, live mostly in the southeastern part of Lithuania, in the Vilnius and Salcininkai regions. The majority of them are rural inhabitants. Their educational level tends to be low. They are mostly part of a native population who have lived in these regions for centuries. In Lithuania there is an urban-rural divide between Poles.

These differences suggest that the distribution of speakers of minority languages among the different occupational groups may vary. Table 11 shows the percentage of Lithuanian, Russian, Polish etc. native speakers in each occupational group, when each language group is analysed separately. Thus, 7.3% of all those who claim Lithuanian as their native/mother tongue, and who are actively in the labour force, are ‘legislators, senior officers or managers, compared to 5.2% of Russian native speakers, 3.4% of native Polish speakers, 3.1% and so on.

Table 11: Percentage of those in the Labour Force who claim selected languages as their Native/Mother Tongue, classified by Occupational Group

Occupation/ Socio-economic category	Native language /Mother tongue
	Lithuanian	Russian	Polish	Belarussian	Other
	%	%	%	%	%
Legislators, senior officers, managers	7.3	5.2	3.4	3.1	7.8
Professionals	13.4	11.0	6.5	7.6	12.0
Technicians, associate professionals	8.6	6.7	5.0	5.7	6.3
Clerks	3.8	3.5	3.5	3.0	2.1
Service, shop, market	9.4	9.7	10.5	8.7	8.6
Skilled agricultural and fisheries workers	9.2	3.4	8.7	4.4	5.0
Craft and related trade workers	11.4	15.5	14.1	18.8	13.2
Plant and machinery operators	9.4	10.4	13.0	14.8	8.9
Elementary occupations	5.7	6.6	9.1	10.5	6.6
Armed forces	0.9	0.7	0.5	0.1	0.3
Not indicated (employed)	1.2	1.8	1.0	0.7	2.0
Unemployed	19.7	25.5	24.7	22.6	27.5
TOTAL	100	100	100	100	100
Nos. (thous)	1257	137	88	8	8