December 28, 2011

Beautiful Spectrum of Today's Worker-Types

It used to be that we have only two types of workers: blue-collar workers who perform manual labor, and white-collar workers who perform professional, managerial, or administrative work. These days, labor scholars actually have become more creative and came up with more colors than these two:

  1. Green-collar workers are those employed in the environmental sectors of the economy
  2. Pink-collar workers perform work said to be stereotypical women's work and are typically in the service industry
  3. Gold-collar workers who are classified into two: young, low-wage workers who invest in conspicuous luxury; or, highly-skilled knowledge workers, traditionally classified as white collar, but who have recently become essential enough to business operations as to warrant a new classification
Finally, we also have another type whose appropriate color still signify further ambiguities in the definition assigned to it: gray-collar workers, whose occupations incorporate some of the elements of both blue- and white-collar, or are completely different from both categories. Too ambiguous in fact that they can come from different industries (farming, fishing, forestry, and other forms of agribusiness; health care, aged care, child care, and the personal service sector; protective services and security; food preparation and the catering industry; high-tech technicians; skilled trades, technicians, etc.; typists, stenographers).

Grey-collar workers often have associate degrees from a community college in a particular field. They are unlike blue-collar workers in that blue-collar workers can often be trained on the job within several weeks whereas grey-collar workers already have a specific skill set.

Anyway, there is still a lot in the color spectrum that hasn't been taken yet. Considering the ever-expanding range of worker-types, expect more color-workers to come out in the future.

Maybe I'll try calling one.

Source: Wikipedia