White-collar worker

A white-collar worker is a person who performs professional, desk, managerial, or administrative work. White-collar work may be performed in an office or other administrative setting. White-collar workers include job paths related to government, consulting, academia, accountancy, business and executive management, design, engineering, market research, finance, human resources, operations research, marketing, public relations, information technology, networking, law, healthcare, architecture, and research and development. Other types of work are those of a grey-collar worker, who has more specialized knowledge than those of a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor.

Office workers.

Etymology

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.

The term "white collar" is credited to Upton Sinclair, an American writer, in relation to contemporary clerical, administrative, and management workers during the 1930s,[1] though references to white-collar work appear as early as 1935. White collar employees are considered highly educated as compared to blue collar.

Health effects

Less physical activity among white-collar workers has been thought to be a key factor in increased life-style related health conditions such as fatigue, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and heart disease.[2] Also, working at a computer could potentially lead to diseases associated with monotonous data entry such as carpal tunnel syndrome.[3] Workplace interventions such as alternative activity workstations, sit-stand desks, promotion of stair use are among measures being implemented to counter the harms of sedentary workplace environments.[4] The quality of evidence used to determine the effectiveness and potential health benefits of many of these interventions is weak. More research is needed to determine which interventions may be effective in the long-term.[5] Low quality evidence indicates that sit-stand desks may reduce sitting in the workplace during the first year of their use, however, it is not clear if sit-stand desks may be effective at reducing sitting in the longer-term.[5]

Demographics

Formerly a minority in the agrarian and early industrial societies, white-collar workers have become a majority in industrialized countries due to modernization and outsourcing of manufacturing jobs.[6]

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. In addition, the work tasks have blurred. "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.

See also
  • Designation of workers by collar color
  • Knowledge worker
  • White-collar crime
  • Salaryman

Notes
  1. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition. Electronically indexed online document. White collar, usage 1, first example.
  2. Schröer, S; Haupt, J; Pieper, C (January 2014). "Evidence-based lifestyle interventions in the workplace--an overview". Occupational Medicine. 64 (1): 8–12. doi:10.1093/occmed/kqt136. PMID 24280187.
  3. "Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS): Occupational Disease of White-Collar Workers". opporty.com. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  4. Commissaris, DA; Huysmans, MA; Mathiassen, SE; Srinivasan, D; Koppes, LL; Hendriksen, IJ (18 December 2015). "Interventions to reduce sedentary behavior and increase physical activity during productive work: a systematic review". Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health. 42 (3): 181–91. doi:10.5271/sjweh.3544. PMID 26683116.
  5. Shrestha, Nipun; Kukkonen-Harjula, Katriina T.; Verbeek, Jos H.; Ijaz, Sharea; Hermans, Veerle; Pedisic, Zeljko (2018). "Workplace interventions for reducing sitting at work". The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2018 (12): CD010912. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD010912.pub5. ISSN 1469-493X. PMC 6517221. PMID 30556590.
  6. Van Horn, Carl; Schaffner, Herbert (2003). Work in America: M-Z. CA, USA: ABC-Clio Ltd. p. 597. ISBN 9781576076767.

Further reading
  • Mills, Charles Wright. White Collar: the American Middle Classes, in series, Galaxy Book[s]. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. N.B.: "First published [in] 1951."
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