Grey Collar Jobs: What They Are And Examples

What type of worker are you? Have you checked your shirt collar to see? If that seems completely ridiculous to you — it probably is. Yet, that’s a way jobs have been classified for almost a hundred years.

The American author Upton Sinclair is often cited as the man who coined the phrase, white-collar worker. Whether or not that’s where this classification system began, it does make sense.

At least, it did back in the 1920s when he wrote about it. White-collar referred to the people who worked in offices wearing suits and white, button-down dress shirts.

Since then, the classifications have expanded and blurred. They’re not quite as clear-cut as they once were, but the term grey-collar worker came from that system.

1. Airline Pilot Jobs (Overview)

2. Fire Fighter Jobs (Overview)

3. Paralegal Jobs (Overview)

4. Stenographer Jobs (Overview)

5. Funeral Director Jobs (Overview)

6. Chef Jobs (Overview)

7. School Administrator Jobs (Overview)

8. Teacher Jobs (Overview)

9. Emergency Medical Technician Jobs (Overview)

10. Electrician Jobs (Overview)

11. Plumber Jobs (Overview)

12. Elevator Technician Jobs (Overview)

13. Carpentry Foreman Jobs (Overview)

15 Grey Collar Jobs

If it’s a bit clearer now, you might see the benefits of picking a grey-collar job. You can start right out of high school and begin earning money immediately while you learn a trade. Then, as you get more skilled and experienced with on-the-job training, you can start advancing.

As you become educated and earn certificates, you’ll see a change in pay grades. This is because you’re moving from blue-collar toward white-collar and ending somewhere in the grey-collar realm. The following are examples of grey-collar jobs:

1. Airline Pilot
   Average Annual Salary: $67,000

   Most airline pilots work for a specific company transporting people or cargo. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary for airline pilot and their flight engineers in May of 2019 was $147,220. This puts you in a high earning capacity.

   You’ll need a bachelor’s degree, and then you’ll have to go to pilot school and complete ground training, flight training and put in a certain number of hours of in-plane flight. It’s almost a white collar job except that you’re not in an office and you’re wearing a uniform.

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2. Fire fighter
   Average Annual Salary: $39,000

   Obviously, firefighters put out fires and rescue kittens from trees, but they’re called in many emergency situations. The work environment can be very dangerous, and they typically have odd, rotating shifts.

   They need a high school diploma and some emergency medical service certifications. Most of them have received specific training at a fire academy and pass a series of tests.

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3. Paralegals
   Average Annual Salary: $46,000

   Are there to support legal professionals. They do not have law degrees but do have specific training, typically in a vocational environment. They prepare for trials, hearings, meetings, and depositions. They’re often in charge of gathering paperwork and organizing findings.

   They do a whole lot of the same tasks that attorneys do, but they cannot represent a client in court.

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4. Stenographer
   Average Annual Salary: $45,821

   Stenographers sit in a courtroom and transcribe every word that’s said as it’s being said. To do this, they need to pass a certification test. While going to school and earning a degree isn’t necessary, it’s highly recommended.

   Learning to operate a stenography machine with skill and ease and to translate the shorthand code is incredibly difficult, so schooling is almost always necessary.

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5. Clergy
   Average Annual Salary: N/A

   The clergy has a long history of being educated but not always holding advanced degrees. Today, most clergies do have advanced degrees, and they do a little bit of everything.

   They help people, spread their religion, and can even be responsible for managing the bookkeeping of their parish, and might even have to do cleaning and repairs – it all depends on the size of their church.

6. Funeral Director
   Average Annual Salary: $41,000

   A funeral director is pretty much what it sounds like. This director position requires someone who has a great knowledge of business and marketing and needs to be incredibly skilled at dealing with people during the most traumatic times in their lives.

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7. Agribusiness Professionals
   Average Annual Salary: N/A

   Agribusiness jobs deal with agriculture, but instead of growing crops or raising livestock, they focus on management, marketing, and food financing.

   There can be hands-on elements of the job and a lot of office and paperwork involved. It’s an interesting field that’s seeing significant growth.

8. Chef
   Average Annual Salary: $44,000

   Being a cook and working in a restaurant can be a blue-collar job and sometimes a pink collar position. But being a chef, especially a head chef, earns you that grey collar.

   This job takes tons of skill and talent, it takes training that can be on-the-job or formal, and your wages can vary dramatically.

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9. School Administrator
   Average Annual Salary: $57,000

   Administrators in schools work in every level of education, from daycares to universities. They may have a background in teaching, but that’s not always required.

   Their duties center around hiring, supervising, managing budgets, and maintaining the school district’s reputation in regard to the population they serve.

   While these people are typically working in an office, they tend to fall a little lower in pay than other white-collar workers.

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10. Teacher
    Average Annual Salary: $46,000

    Traditionally, teaching is also classified as a pink-collar job, in fact, one of the best-known pink-collar careers. They can also be considered grey collar workers. They have a bachelor’s degree at least; some even hold advanced degrees.

    They’re highly educated and skilled, but they are often not paid as well as white-collar workers with the same education levels. And they don’t work in an office setting. This is why teachers fall into the grey collar worker category.

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11. Emergency Medical Technician
    Average Annual Salary: $40,000

    EMTs, EMSs, EMRs, and even Emergency Room Technicians all qualify as grey collar workers. They certainly have a lot of education and specialized knowledge. Their jobs are very important, but they’re also working with their hands, and they aren’t sitting in an office.

    Many medical jobs fall into the grey category, with only doctors typically considered white-collar professionals because of their education level and financial remuneration.

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12. Electrician
    Average Annual Salary: $49,000

    This job starts off in the blue-collar arena, and it can advance to grey-collar the more years of experience and the more educated the individual becomes. There’s a lot of specialized skill and knowledge required to hold this job.

    Advancing to a master electrician means you hold a supervisory role, and you’re now classified as a grey-collar worker and can even be seen as a white-collar one. Especially if your pay goes from hourly to salaried and you have managerial responsibilities.

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13. Plumber
    Average Annual Salary: $56,000

    Plumbers can start working as apprentices right out of high school and learn the job through classrooms and on-the-job experience.

    But if they want to go from blue-collar to grey and make a lot more money, they’re going to need additional certifications, licensure, and years of experience.

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14. Elevator Technician
    Average Annual Salary: $38,130

    Another job that starts in the blue-collar world and advances the more experience and training you have. This job is often considered blue-collar, but the increasing technical demands and computerization involved are moving it into the grey collar arena.

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15. Carpentry Foreman
    Average Annual Salary: $56,489

    While a carpenter is a blue-collar worker, moving from doing most of the work yourself to a supervisory position can move you into a grey collar job. This means you’ll be doing less hands-on work and more administrative work, putting you in the office sometimes and in the field other times.

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What Is a Grey Collar Worker?

Someone who has a grey collar job sits in-between traditional white-collar jobs and blue-collar jobs. That means they’re almost an office worker, yet their job roots are traditionally blue-collar occupations.

It’s useful to understand the entire classification system to understand what this truly means.

Job Classifications by Collar Color

As technology advances, more jobs are done by robot technology, and some jobs are phased out entirely. As a result, the collar classification system continues to evolve.

These are some of the more common terms used to categorize occupations, but don’t be surprised if more crop up and if some fade away:

• White Collar Jobs. As discussed earlier, white-collar jobs are traditionally office jobs. But not all office jobs are white-collar careers. To fit this category, the person holding the job needs to be highly skilled and often holds a bachelor’s degree or more.

  They’re also well paid, in general.

• Blue Collar Jobs. Blue-collar workers have been around since the first jobs started. They’re people who use their skills and physical abilities to do a job.

  Typically, jobs that include manual labor, or are in the trades industries, are considered blue-collar jobs. The blue referred to the traditional blue jumpsuits or work shirts that they wore.

  The education for these jobs typically involves vocational school, on-the-job training, or apprenticeships. Their pay is traditionally on the lower end of the spectrum, but that’s changing.

• Pink Collar Jobs. The term pink-collar job was coined around the 1970s and referred to jobs traditionally held by women. Those jobs were specifically: teachers, nurses, and secretaries.

  Today that term has evolved to be more inclusive and less gender biased. Now pink-collar jobs are more about people who perform services and works that directly deal with people.

• Green Collar Jobs. The growing importance of the environment has prompted this as a job classification. Any job that centers around the environment can be termed green-collar.

  The catch is, you could be working a traditionally white or blue-collar job, but it deals with the environment. What are you? This is where things are getting more and more complex.

• Gold Collar Jobs. This is a newer term and refers to people who have jobs that focus on “intellectual labor.” In a way, it’s much like a grey-collar job because it straddles the blue and white-collar line.

  But gold-collar workers are incredibly specialized and often technologically trained. They solve complex technical programs and usually work in academic or scientific fields.

• Grey Collar Jobs. The grey-collar jobs field is expanding because it incorporates a blue-collar job with additional education or certifications, and it earns more money than blue-collar but less than white.

  Think of someone like an electrician, who might garner an entry-level job through as an apprentice, but eventually, they take some courses, earn certifications, and begin making more money.

  It should be noted that grey-collar jobs sometimes refers to people who are retired and then have reentered the workforce. It’s key to know this, but that’s not the definition that this article focuses on.

Author

Kristin Kizer

Kristin Kizer is an award-winning writer, television and documentary producer, and content specialist who has worked on a wide variety of written, broadcast, and electronic publications. A former writer/producer for The Discovery Channel, she is now a freelance writer and delighted to be sharing her talents and time with the wonderful Zippia audience.