Environments of Compensation and Benefits Administration

How Work is Evolving

Fewer unskilled jobs

Today's jobs differ from yesterday's jobs and have been greatly influenced by the rise in technology. The most visible change is the shift toward white-collar and low-skilled service employment. Displacement of low-skilled workers in the industrial sector through automation persists and many factories have been moved offshore.

Rise of the service sector

The growth of the service sector has seen the most pervasive change to work. The shift toward service employment is in many ways a result of rising incomes and technological advancement.

• Agriculture, manufacturing, and mining no longer represent the typical workplace in the United States or any other country with an advanced economy.
• The growth of the service sector has changed the traditional links between work and physical effort.
• Increasingly, we work with symbols instead of tools and produce reports instead of goods.

More white-collar workers

Paralleling the growth of the service sector is the decrease of blue-collar workers and the increase of white-collar employment.

Managers and professionals today outnumber unskilled workers five to one.

This growth in professional and managerial jobs reflects, in part, the increasing size and complexity of many organizations. It also reflects the growing importance of research and managerial functions in the use of advanced technologies.

White-collar vs. Blue-collar Jobs

The differences between white-collar and blue-collar jobs:

White-collar jobs typically require some sort of education or vocational preparation beyond high school such as course work or a diploma from a postsecondary educational institution. These kinds of jobs will have higher level mental demands, including logic, reasoning, mathematics, and both written and spoken language, than blue-collar positions. White-collar workers typically perform work in an office.

Blue-collar jobs often require skills that may easily be learned "on the job", in an apprenticeship, trade school, or community college, and are more manual in nature. In fact, many blue-collar jobs will require higher physical demands than most white-collar jobs. Blue-collar jobs are often performed in a manufacturing environment.

A wide range of skill levels, work environments and job attributes are found in both groups.

However, it's important to recognize that:

1. White-collar and blue-collar designations are not necessarily made on the basis of job skills alone.
2. Many blue-collar jobs actually require more skill and provide more challenge than do some white-collar jobs.
3. Although clerical workers may enjoy a more pleasant environment, the tasks of a skilled manufacturing employee may demand more talent
4. Many service workers enjoy less status and lower pay than workers on assembly lines do.