Lawyers no longer dominate the U.S. Congress, says a new analysis by Nick Robinson at Harvard Law School. Charting the occupational backgrounds of U.S. Congress members since the late 1700s, the researcher finds that in the mid-19th century, 79.5% of members of Congress were lawyers; by the mid-1960s their share had dropped to 57.5%, and by 2015 it had fallen to 36.5%. This decline has corresponded with the rise of other groups being represented in Congress, such as those with a business background. The number of members of Congress from business or banking rose from 12.9% in 1850 to a high of 30.6% in 1996. (It has since fallen to 25.5% in 2015.) Members of Congress coming from politics or public service has grown the most over the last 70 years, from 9.1% in 1945 to 23% in 2015.
Source: The Declining Dominance of Lawyers in U.S. Federal Politics
