We once thought of white collar as workers who performed less physically intensive labor… work at desks … and tended to earn higher pay. On the other hand we scaled down blue collar workers as relegated to manual laborers who work a 40 hour physically demanding job for hourly wages. A bit arrogant even then – and completely out of sync with brain based business practices today. 
These two terms blue and white are even less useful than they might have been back when we distinguished people as unskilled laborers … such a factory or service employees. Perhaps they were no more than negative stereotypes when more unskilled jobs in factories service trades were more popular.
I’m not sure they were especially useful then either. However … now that the American blue collar workforce has steadily decreased in size … it’s high time for another name that better describes people’s careers and capabilities. Take computer designers - they are blue ... white ...and every other color ...and they come with an amazing array of highly tuned skills!
Let’s face it … many so called white collar workers today operate in a more casual setting and dress to show that change. Similarly … those we dubbed blue collar workers too often come to work in business casual dress. If not by color coding … how then do we distinguish people who perform different kinds of jobs?
We avoid color coding when we ask three further questions:
1. What does it means to be smart?
2. What smart skills do I have to do a quality job?
3. How do my skills transfer to solve problems at work?
Times and talents required at work have changed … so it only makes sense that the terms blue or white collar are less useful to describe people.
For one thing … brain based business finds less use for the term soft and hard skills, and instead prefers the term developing as related to smart skills? It all boils down to the vital question … How are you smart?” That relays back to IQ scores in traditional notions of the brain… but IQ in itself no longer makes the grade as a way to accurately describe people’s real acumen. There are improved guidelines for rating multiple intelligences – based on more current notions of smart skills that show a person’s intelligence… and none of these answers are rooted in blue or white collar labor. Nuff said. What do you think?
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