For instance, a company looking for people for accountants generally requires new hires to have an undergraduate degree in accounting or finance. Blue-collar workers may only require certain skills that can be obtained either on the job or by going to trade school. A white-collar worker belongs to a class of employees known for earning higher average https://simple-accounting.org/ salaries doing highly skilled work, but not by performing manual labor at their jobs. White-collar workers historically have been the “shirt and tie” set, defined by office jobs and management, and not “getting their hands dirty.” Collar color is a set of terms denoting groups of working individuals based on the colors of their collars worn at work.
- A white-collar worker, on the other hand, may have obtained their job through a more stringent hiring process and may be more difficult to fire.
- For qualified individuals, white-collar job openings may be posted on job boards, but these types of jobs can also be found through word of mouth among people’s social networks.
- American in origin, the term has close analogues in other industrial countries.
- Managers, salaried professionals, office workers, sales personnel, and proprietors are generally included in the category.
- The blue-collar worker may work for hourly wages or receive payment per item produced or assembled.
These can commonly reflect one’s occupation within a broad class, or sometimes gender;[1] at least in the late 20th and 21st century, these are generally metaphorical and not a description of typical present apparel. For the two terms of longest use, white-collar workers are named for the white-collared shirts that were fashionable among office workers in the early and mid-20th century. Blue-collar workers are referred to as such because in the early 20th century, they usually wore sturdy, inexpensive clothing that did not show dirt easily, such as blue denim or cambric shirts. The term blue-collar worker refers to individuals who engage in hard manual labor, typically in the agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, or maintenance sectors.
One of the newest types of collar colors is the green collar, which refers to jobs in the environmental sector. White-collar workers, broad occupational grouping of workers engaged in nonmanual labor; frequently contrasted with blue-collar (manual) employees. American in origin, the term has close analogues in other industrial countries. Managers, salaried professionals, office workers, sales personnel, and proprietors are generally included in the category. Since World War II the number of white-collar workers in the U.S. labor force has increased dramatically. Today they account for almost 50% of the labor force, outnumbering blue-collar workers by approximately 11 million persons.
At senior levels, they may be part of a firm’s upper management and hierarchy. American writer Upton Sinclair is partially responsible for the modern understanding of the term white-collar, having used the phrase in conjunction with administrative work. A white-collar crime is a non-violent crime committed by an individual, often of middle or upper socioeconomic status, typically for financial gain. Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master’s in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology.
The movement of a nation’s employment market toward the service industry and away from agricultural labor signifies growth, advancement, and development. An attorney will need to keep themselves apprised of recent rulings and changes in case law that affect their area of expertise. Real estate agents will need to keep track of fluctuations in real estate prices and the underlying influences that drive such trends.
Blue-Collar Workers
Workers are often divided into categories using different classifications. Two of the most popular types are blue-collar and white-collar workers. Attorneys, accountants, architects, bankers, real estate agents, business consultants, and brokers are often described as white-collar positions. Though the actual work performed typically is not menial, white-collar roles can require the professional to commit to extensive hours during the workweek, as well as on weekends. To say one person works a blue-collar job while another works a white-collar one carries the significance of salary size.
Why Are Jobs Defined by Collar Color?
Jobs were generally classified by the type of collars, shirts, or clothing that workers typically wore. White-collar workers were named as such because of the white shirts they wore under their suits. Another way to define these two phrases is the perception that white-collar workers not only make more money than blue-collar workers but that they also belong to different social classes. The perception is that white-collar workers have a higher status because they may earn more and may be more educated.
White-Collar Workers
“White-collar” employees may perform “blue-collar” tasks (or vice versa). An example would be a restaurant manager who may wear more formal clothing yet still assist with cooking food or taking customers’ orders, or a construction worker who also performs desk work. The term refers to the white dress shirts of male office workers common through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Western countries, as opposed to the blue overalls worn by many manual laborers. American writer Upton Sinclair is partially responsible for the modern understanding of the term “white collar,” having used the phrase in conjunction with administrative work. The differences in connotation between white collar and blue collar have much more to say about the way we perceive the service industry in comparison to manufacturing and agriculture. White-collar workers are suit-and-tie workers who work at a desk and, stereotypically, eschew physical labor.
That’s because society often perceives office jobs to be better than those that require manual or taxing labor. Put simply, an office job is considered more desirable than one in the manufacturing or agricultural sector because of the type of white collar workers definition economics work involved. Some of the most common blue-collar jobs include welders, mechanics, electricians, and construction workers. Some may be more specialized, such as power plant operators, power distributors, and nuclear power plant operators.
White collar employees are considered highly educated and talented as compared to blue collar. This class of workers stands in contrast to blue-collar workers, who traditionally wore blue shirts and worked in plants, mills, and factories. Those who have this sort of job are characterized as members of the working class. Typical white-collar jobs include company management, lawyers, accountants, financial and insurance jobs, consultants, and computer programmers, among many others. The blue-collar and white-collar descriptors as it pertains to work dress may no longer be an accurate descriptor, as office attire has broadened beyond a white shirt and tie. Employees in office environments may wear a variety of colors, may dress in business casuals or wear casual clothes altogether.
Blue-collar workers, on the other hand, are believed to fall lower on the social ladder because they do manual labor and may not be as educated. Other types of colored collar categories of workers are used less often. These include pink collar, green collar, gold collar, and gray collar. Unlike white and blue collars, the other categories are not derived from the workers traditionally wearing any particular color of shirts. White-collar jobs are believed to be more sought-after than blue-collar ones.
People began flocking to large cities where factories were labor to operate machinery and work on the production line. The term white-collar, on the other hand, became popular in the 20th century. These jobs typically are based in an office; however, some industries may still require a presence in the field. This is especially true for professionals who regularly meet with clients and customers, or travel to conferences and meetings. Many jobs that require a shirt and tie today are actually low-paying and high stress, especially in the modern services and technology sectors.
Blue-collar jobs are those that involve a greater degree of physically-taxing or manual labor. Blue-collar jobs include farmers, mechanics, power plant operators, and electricians. White-collar jobs, on the other hand, typically work in office settings in clerical, administrative, and management roles.
Gold collars are found in specialized fields of law and medicine; a reference, perhaps, to the high salaries these professions command. Gray collars refer to those, like engineers, who are officially white-collar but perform blue-collar tasks regularly as part of their jobs. As blue-collar job technology increases, so does the amount of education needed and subsequent pay workers receive, such as those for electricians and cable installers. The way blue-collar workers are paid depends on the industry in which they work. Individuals who work in blue-collar industries are often paid on an hourly basis, such as mechanics. Some workers are paid by the number of pieces they complete in a day, which is typical for those who work in factory settings.
He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Other key distinctions between the two include differing educational backgrounds and social classes among others. Examples of white-collar crimes include securities fraud, embezzlement, corporate fraud, and money laundering.
The blue-collar worker may work for hourly wages or receive payment per item produced or assembled. They may be part of a union that maintains the security of hours and future work. Likewise, there may be insecurity about the stability of the blue-collar worker’s job, whether it be dependent on a contractual agreement with a third party or temporary.