White collar workers, how are you fairing?

Growing up as a blue collar worker I assumed the shiny bums with their uni. degrees always earned more than the humble, get down and dirty blue collar boys. I believe the resource boom changed that around 2003 with hourly rates increasing in line with the demand. The blue collar boys went stratospheric in many instances leaving the uni. grads. in the dust.

Back to Earth now with the resource boom tapered significantly and resource related industries cutting back accordingly. However the blue collar boys that are good at their jobs and hold their position will at least maintain the upper hand. And so we should. The real work is done on the floor.

SMILE. Practice your small talk. Work on your handshake. Because jobs as we imagine them are over.
In the future we will all be working in services. The trend is extremely clear in a graph put out by the RBA this week.

Click to expand...

Nearly four million people already work in household services, which include health, education, hospitality and art & recreation.
Then there are over two million in business services. That makes six million service workers in total — three times more than work in construction and manufacturing combined. The shift was started by outsourcing to China. It will be accelerated by computerisation.
Blue collar or white collar are going to become silly labels. Instead there will be higher paid service jobs, (e.g. doctors, lawyers) and lower paid ones, (e.g. in fast food service.) We might start referring to business card jobs vs. name badge jobs.

Click to expand...

http://www.news.com.au/finance/work...-age-of-the-nerd/story-fnkgbb6w-1227570628692

Wysiwyg said:

Growing up as a blue collar worker I assumed the shiny bums with their uni. degrees always earned more than the humble, get down and dirty blue collar boys. I believe the resource boom changed that around 2003 with hourly rates increasing in line with the demand. The blue collar boys went stratospheric in many instances leaving the uni. grads. in the dust.

Back to Earth now with the resource boom tapered significantly and resource related industries cutting back accordingly. However the blue collar boys that are good at their jobs and hold their position will at least maintain the upper hand. And so we should. The real work is done on the floor.
]

Click to expand...

A lot of white collar professions are over supplied (lawyers and pharmacists for example). 457 visas have put a lot of pressure on IT salaries and the expansion of higher ed in this country has meant that a lot of marginal students are getting BAs and then can't find a job that requires a uni degree.

Wysiwyg said:

Back to Earth now with the resource boom tapered significantly and resource related industries cutting back accordingly. However the blue collar boys that are good at their jobs and hold their position will at least maintain the upper hand. And so we should. The real work is done on the floor.

Click to expand...

That's very true, a lot of mines going onto care and maintenance, are holding key personnel required to wind up production.

That doesn't amount to many people though, unfortunately.

Still got a lot of bums on seats churning out endless procedures earning 20% more than the coal face workers.

Tisme said:

Still got a lot of bums on seats churning out endless procedures earning 20% more than the coal face workers.

Click to expand...

where?
offices pretty empty in Brisbane

qldfrog said:

where?
offices pretty empty in Brisbane

Click to expand...

Well I can tell you that the tenancy rate is still increasing in the CBD regardless.

I also have a friend visiting me from the wastelands of the north and he's relating how he's losing his local support staff to head office where they are leep frogging his salary and getting to do really important things like online publishing. I'm guessing core staff aren't necessarily those that do the actual work, but the servants.

Also have another friend who feels like the last Mohican in a certain govt utility, ex parliamentary and political party types all have high paid jobs and staff to do nothing (literally: they don't even have to show up!!) while he's scrambling to get extra ground staff to do the actual work.

White collars workers with degrees to shuffle useless paperwork is where it's at ....and it hard work for them.