Uncover the distinctions between white and blue-collar jobs with our insightful article. Ready to advance in a white-collar career? Explore our range of online courses for a successful future. Click to start your journey now!
White-collar is the term coined for those who wear a suit on a regular workday as they work in office environments, often requiring specialised knowledge such as that offered by a legal admin course. Of course, this is less of an absolute anymore because more and more companies give their employees the privilege to wear anything they want to wear in the office.
Nevertheless, the term still applies to specific types of jobs in Australia, predominantly in an office or administrative setting. Some of the common white-collar jobs include human resource consultants, data entry specialists, managers, and executives.
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Blue-collar jobs are traditionally those that fall under the umbrella of manual labour jobs with hourly pay. Hands-on tasks related to construction, plumbing, manufacturing, and even domestic cleaning, where domestic cleaning training courses can provide essential skills, would be great examples of blue-collar jobs.
There is a new type of role cropping up across Australia in recent times, also known as the light blue-collar job. This term generally relates to university or college-educated individuals who’ve found themselves in lower-paid labour office jobs, with wages comparable to what blue-collar workers earn.
PayScale Australia reveals that, interestingly, some blue-collar salaries are not too far from white-collar ones. For instance, a Construction Laborer earns about A$49,000 annually while a starting bookkeeper, potentially holding a Certificate in Bookkeeping, could expect to bring in around A$55,699 per year.
On the other hand, some white-collar jobs, just as software developers, earn almost double the amount that blue-collar workers earn, or even triple what general practitioners earn. A software developer receives up to AU$ 94,864 per year, as per PayScale Australia, and a general practitioner earns up to AU$ 297,281 annually.
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