Grey-collar workers
Topic: Tertiary, Quaternary and Quinary Activities · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 6 "Tertiary and Quaternary Activities"
Meaning
Grey-collar workers do jobs that mix white-collar office work with blue-collar hands-on work. Their jobs need technical training and also some practical, physical tasks. Common examples are technicians, health-care staff and IT support staff. The term is also used in a second sense: people who keep working after retirement age. The term matters because many modern service jobs do not fit neatly into the old "office or factory" split.
Example
An IT support technician fixes faulty computers and network cables by hand, which is blue-collar work. The same technician also handles software and technical problems, which is white-collar work. That mix makes it a grey-collar job.
Don't confuse with
- Blue-collar workers: they do mainly manual production and factory work. Grey-collar work adds technical knowledge to the manual work.