How It's Used

“To the average white-collar worker, the tech guy occupies a slot somewhere between the plumber and the in-house counsel — he is there to serve, but holds a worker’s professional well-being in his highly skilled hands. He sometimes has access to highly confidential documents and must be discreet. He must inspire confidence. He must speak the local dialect. He must respond with speed.”

—Susan Dominus, “When Hedge Funders Are Sent Home, Careful Tending Is in Order,” The New York Times, December 29, 2008.

“California's battered construction and housing industries, long pillars of the state economy, remain troubling sources of weakness. Over the last year, the state has lost 760,200 jobs, nearly 1 in 5 of them in construction. White-collar workers have likewise suffered from the housing crash as thousands of jobs in banking, mortgage processing and real estate sales have vanished. ”

—Alena Semuels, “Unemployment in California hits post-World War II high: The state's rate jumps to 11.9% in July as the U.S. rate declines to 9.4%. Job losses have an outsize effect on Latinos in the state as work in the construction and hospitality sectors vanishes,” The Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2009.

"The miners' pay and conditions contrast starkly with privileged white-collar workers in City-based and property companies, even in a year of near-meltdown in the financial sector. The average pay at money broker Icap last year topped £200,000 for the first time, while the Man hedge fund paid an average of £198,760. The Guardian survey five years ago showed Man's average was £100,000. Other top payers include fund manager Schroders, private equity firm 3i, the London Stock Exchange and the property firm Hammerson."

—Ashley Seager and Julia Finch, "Executive Pay: Salary gap widens between workers and their directors: With one FTSE 100 boss paid 1,374 times the average employee, the recession has hit the shopfloor far harder than the boardroom," The Guardian (UK), September 16, 2009.

"From the luxury island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, amidst an archipelago of tax havens, Kenney runs one of the world's most successful asset-hunting and recovery firms. The Canadian-reared lawyer–elder brother to federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney–has seen his staff complement grow from five people to 17 in four years. And things are bound to get better: 'With the explosion of global fraud we are seeing an enormous number of new cases,' says Kenney. Even after spectacular anomalies like the Bernie Madoff case are put aside, he estimates that white-collar theft has swollen to $1 billion (U.S.) a month over the past three years."

—Nick Ryan, "Never Mind the Death Threats: Fraudsters readily leap over boundaries. For the police, it's harder: That's where Canadian lawyer Martin Kinney comes in," The Globe and Mail, October 30, 2009.

"Earlier this year, COAG signed the $6.2 billion National Affordable Housing Agreement. Of this, by far the largest part was the $5.5 billion allocated to indigenous housing. This, the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program, or SIHIP, is not the only indigenous housing program in the country but it is the largest – ever. Hailed as 'a new way of delivering housing in remote communities', it is supposed to provide 4200 new houses and 4800 refurbishments over 10 years.

"In fact, in 15 months it hasn't delivered much at all, unless you count the limitless tangle of committees, reports, acronyms, consultancies, policies and, of course, white-collar whitefella jobs. Money has been spent but few houses produced, if any. The number may be none, as many commentators aver, or 102, which is the best gloss even the relevant minister, Jenny Macklin, can find for it. Either way, it's pathetic. And the mere fact that it is virtually impossible to check these numbers is itself indicative of the problem."

—Elizabeth Farrelly, "A shamed nation turns a blind eye," The Sydney Morning Herald, November 14, 2009.

Links

Related on eAlmanac
Blue Collar
Gray Collar
Green Collar
Pink Collar

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on White-Collar Workers
The official Dilbert Web site