[bluGill]

Not in the same way. The poor see a job without a next step. They don't see themselves becoming foreman, or any higher paid position of more responsibility. The career-minded are looking to see how they can get a better position. Maybe eventually the career minded will decide that something is far enough - they stop at senior engineer don't make me management or architect (there are more paths than these). This is something you need some experience to get to and it is intentional.

The poor tend to stick to labor jobs that you can train any healthy person to do in a few weeks on the job.

[jolmg]

A subset of the poor, perhaps. Aren't you generalizing too much? I think you're assuming too many behaviors from a word that simply means current lack of money. I would think that some portion of the poor if not most would be interested in long-term solutions to their problem.

[silverpepsi]

Fresh college grads generally are poor but the term in this context is never used to describe their social class. We'd instead describe them as broke, as we expect they'll soon improve their lot. Poor hence obviously indicates the class for whom the probability of doing this is below average if not terrible. It's a probability on a collective not any rule applied to an individual