At one point there were people who believed that blue-collar workers were going to be eliminated due to advances in technology and outsourcing. Both white and blue-collar jobs were going through a massive shake-up. There was a strong push to move workers from the blue-collar setting and get them involved in “better work”.
Blue-collar workers generally are those with less formal education and they are required to do jobs that need skilled manual labor. The usual view during this time was that these jobs would have little future, low money.
Blue-collar work was not considered to be the most desirable type of work for anyone who wants to advance in the workplace. The commonly held conception was that there would soon be little work for people who were not trained for more technical jobs.
Original workforce descriptions considered that only workers with HS educations or less would be entering the blue-collar workforce. These workers would receive less pay and would only be paid an hourly wage.
Blue-collar work was often thought to be a dead end as far as the chance of advancement for workers. White-collar jobs would demand their workers to have at least 2 or more years of college and would be salaried positions. It was these workers who were thought to have brighter job futures.
In the white-collar jobs vs blue-collar jobs battle it was the advantages in pay and benefits that made the white-collar jobs a more popular choice. This was at a time when the two working classes were still distinctly different. The blue-collar workers and white- collar workers were separated by their pay, education and duties. It was rare to have a job that effectively straddled the lines of both the working classes, but even this was changing.
There was a major shift in the blue-collar workplace as more people attempted to change their employment. During this time there were other changes happening as well. Women were coming to the workplace as both white and blue-collar workers. They were finding more opportunities available to them in the blue-collar world.
With workers moving to other fields, more blue-collar jobs were available. Many of these women did not have college degrees and they did not have job experience so employment choices were limited. But they were willing to work at some of the lower paying blue- collar jobs. There were also federal laws that required some companies to hire them. The blue-collar workforce was beginning to now experience some of the most far-reaching transformations of all time.
In the ensuing years, blue-collar jobs took a number of dips just as white collar jobs did. Then it became obvious how important blue-collar positions actually were. Since the job pool had begun to shrink because people had left the blue-collar workforce, this provided quite a dilemma for employers. They had employees to fill the white-collar positions but not enough to fill all of the open blue-collar slots.
Even the available job pool was often found to be small and inadequate for the needs of the company. While women were available to pick up some of the slack and fill the open positions, it still left many employers needing to find some way to recruit more workers. A blue-collar jobs list can be found at BlueCollarCrossing and this can be used by blue- collar workers to find just which companies are looking for people with their particular skills.
Many Americans still believe that blue-collar openings are continuing to be on the decline. The truth is that there is a bigger demand for these workers today. A quick browse of BlueCollarCrossing can show how many positions are available for job hunters in the blue-collar world.
Even with the downturn in the economy today it is obvious that experienced blue-collar workers are a valuable asset to businesses. Employers need skilled employees to fill their open trucking and construction positions. Carpenters, plumbers, repairmen and machinists are just a few of the jobs that are seen listed at the online job boards.
There are now some top blue-collar jobs that pay higher hourly pay for their workers which gives them higher annual incomes than many of their managers. Some of these blue-collar positions are for electricians and plumbers.
These jobs can be found on BlueCollarCrossing where you will be able to see not only the available jobs but also what the pay and benefits are. A facilities engineer is a good example of how job classification is blurring. This is actually a job that once was considered to be a white-collar job but has elements of both.
A worker in one of these positions can easily anticipate a salary of $50-70,000 per year. The jobs can be filled with college graduate engineers but also a worker who has a HS diploma and the required work experience can be selected. The worker who has this job is expected to be able to do some physical work. Many of these workers will prefer to wear casual or company work clothing. This is one example of how blue-collar jobs are now straddling the lines between the workforces.
There are a number of jobs in society that are not well defined in terms of blue or white. The newer jobs and work environments are making it difficult to label jobs as belonging to one class or the other. Sociologists are now considering using the colors grey, or light blue, to create a new working class category. These two color choices represent the blending of the white and blue-collar job descriptions
