You’probably used the terms “white collar” and “blue collar to describe different classes of workers, but did you know there are four more collar-related terms that are much less frequently used?

Let’s look at all of them:

White collar

Represents the workers who often wear white shirts to work, such as office workers, professional, managerial or administrative work, management teams, and also includes works related to academia, accountancy, business and executive management, management consulting, customer support, market research, finance, networking, attorneys human resources, contracting, operations research, marketing, information technology, medical professionals, architects, research and development.

Blue collar

Represents the color of blue jeans or chambray worn by the “working class’’, The type of work may involve such as factory workers, structural workers, manufacturing, warehousing, mining, excavation, electricity generation and power plant operations, farming, commercial fishing, logging, landscaping, miners, pest control, food processing, oil field work, waste collection and disposal, custodial work, recycling, construction, maintenance, shipping, driving, trucking and many other types of physical work it may involve skilled or unskilled labor. Blue-collar work often involves something being physically built or maintained.

Gray collar

Represents professionally trained workers with higher qualifications than blue collar workers, such as an engineer, airline pilots, flight attendants, firefighters, stenographers, paralegals, military personnel, high-technology technicians and as well as those occupations incorporating elements of both blue- and white-collar.

Pink collar

First coined in the 1970s to describe those who did secretarial work (predominantly a role filled by women). Later it began being used to describe care-oriented careers, such as nurses, teachers, beautician and childminders. Hence, the creation of the term “pink-collar,” which indicated it was not white-collar, was nonetheless an office job and one that was overwhelmingly filled by women.

Gold collar 

Represents highly-trained and skilled workers valued for their innovation, independence, and intelligence, such as doctors, lawyers, scientists.

Green collar

Represents environmental sector workers and jobs related to sustainability, such as organic farmers, eco-friendly engineers also include professionals such as conservation movement workers, environmental consultants, council environmental services/waste management/recycling managers/officers, environmental or biological systems engineers, green building architects, landscape architects, holistic passive solar building designers, solar energy and wind energy engineers and installers, nuclear engineers, green vehicle engineers, “green business” owners, green vehicle, organic farmers, environmental lawyers, ecology educators, and ecotechnology workers, and sales staff working with these services or products. 

Black collar

Manual laborers in industries in which workers generally become very dirty, such as mining or oil-drilling.

No collar 

Artists and “free spirits” who tend to privilege passion and personal growth over financial gain. People who don’t get paid but still work as volunteers fall under this segment as well.

Yet these classifications may overlap each other, as some terms were newly developed to further describe their characteristics.