The article is structured as follows: we first discuss why labor market vulnerability has spread into the highly educated middle class. We then present our argument about the social policy preferences of high-skilled but vulnerable individuals as a cross-pressured group. Ensuing we demonstrate that a substantial part of the high-skilled indeed is confronted with adverse labor market dynamics and show that this exposure is linked to actual disadvantages in the labor market. We then examine the impact of labor market vulnerability and education on social policy preferences, separately and jointly. The final section summarizes the findings and discusses their implications for the literature on welfare state support, insider/ outsider divides and comparative political economy.