Closing the blue and white-collar divide

For decades a remote work­ing rev­o­lu­tion has been pre­dict­ed, but until the out­break of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic it had not arrived. While the rev­o­lu­tion has yet to ben­e­fit the major­i­ty of blue-col­lar work­ers, white-col­lar staff across the world, pre­vi­ous­ly based in offices, are reap­ing the rewards of work­ing from home, includ­ing a bet­ter work-life bal­ance, reduced phys­i­cal health risks and low­er liv­ing costs.

The rise in remote work­ing, jet pro­pelled by the pan­dem­ic, has been heav­i­ly skewed towards high­ly paid, white-col­lar jobs and a huge pro­por­tion of the glob­al work­force does­n’t have the same lux­u­ry. As a result, there are con­cerns over a grow­ing new social divide, which is wors­en­ing long-estab­lished inequal­i­ties.

Research pub­lished in June by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go found 37 per cent of jobs in the Unit­ed States can be per­formed entire­ly at home or, in oth­er terms, near­ly two-thirds can­not. Based on an assess­ment of more than 800 occu­pa­tions to clas­si­fy the fea­si­bil­i­ty of work­ing from home, the researchers then used US Depart­ment of Labor sur­veys to see how many of each of these jobs exist in Amer­i­ca.

“The pan­dem­ic has widened inequal­i­ty,” says Dr Jonathan Din­gel, co-author of the study and the university’s asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics. “Those who can­not work from home face a nasty trade-off between pro­tect­ing them­selves from the dis­ease and pro­tect­ing their pay­check.”

Accord­ing to Dingel’s research, the indus­tries best suit­ed to going remote are well-paid, white-col­lar occu­pa­tions in large cities, where­as blue-col­lar work­ers in sec­tors such as agri­cul­ture and hos­pi­tal­i­ty are find­ing it much more dif­fi­cult or even impos­si­ble to piv­ot, which means some could be severe­ly impact­ed while oth­ers are rel­a­tive­ly unscathed.

“The col­lapse of the restau­rant and enter­tain­ment indus­tries has been hard on the low­er-wage work­ers in those indus­tries,” he says. “And there is also a broad­er set of con­cerns relat­ed to the fact that many ser­vice econ­o­my jobs, which can­not be done from home, are sup­port­ed by the white-col­lar office jobs that, in prin­ci­ple, could be done remote­ly.”

Widening poverty and inequality for blue collar jobs

Dr Juan Palomi­no, an econ­o­mist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford who worked with col­leagues from the Com­plutense Uni­ver­si­ty of Madrid to analyse the impact of the pan­dem­ic in 29 Euro­pean coun­tries, sim­i­lar­ly found that remote work­ing in Europe is strong­ly tied to high­er earn­ings. The team con­clud­ed that social dis­tanc­ing and lock­down mea­sures could cre­ate a siz­able increase in pover­ty and inequal­i­ty, sug­gest­ing exist­ing income inequal­i­ty could be com­pound­ed by the gap in access to the ben­e­fits of remote work.

Their find­ings, pub­lished in Octo­ber in the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Review, found women are less affect­ed in their jobs than men on aver­age, but that tem­po­rary, part-time and self-employed work­ers are, in gen­er­al, worse off. “If you are essen­tial and front­line work­ers, you are exposed to risks of course, name­ly health risks,” says Palomi­no. “But the most vul­ner­a­ble in our sim­u­la­tion are work­ers in closed, non-essen­tial sec­tors.”

He nonethe­less dis­tin­guish­es between blue-col­lar work­ers in fac­to­ries and those work­ing in the ser­vices indus­tries who require in-per­son con­tact with cus­tomers. “The blue-col­lar indus­try was affect­ed in ini­tial lock­down, but it’s not so much affect­ed now,” he says. “Fac­to­ries have reopened, for exam­ple. The sec­tors more like­ly to be closed are the ones with face-to-face con­tact. The divide isn’t exact­ly blue col­lar white col­lar.”

But Dr Mar­ti­na Bisel­lo, research offi­cer for the Euro­pean Foun­da­tion for the Improve­ment of Liv­ing and Work­ing Con­di­tions, argues the pan­dem­ic has opened up more oppor­tu­ni­ty for some low­er-paid white-col­lar work­ers, with the share of employ­ees in the Euro­pean Union’s 27 mem­ber states work­ing from home now at 48 per cent. “The typ­i­cal pro­file of a remote work­er was high skilled, high paid, typ­i­cal­ly white col­lar,” she says. “The COVID cri­sis has, in some ways, neu­tralised and equalised the access for remote work­ing for peo­ple, allow­ing younger work­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty too.”

Bisel­lo, who stud­ied the effect of the pan­dem­ic on more than 130 occu­pa­tions, also found dra­mat­ic dif­fer­ences in the “tele­work­a­bil­i­ty” of jobs, by wages and by edu­ca­tion lev­el. Fur­ther inequal­i­ties, she says, could emerge from an increase in the house­hold bur­den on women, jug­gling work, home-school­ing and care.

Race a factor for remote employees

How­ev­er, race-equal­i­ty experts are con­cerned that Black and eth­ic-minor­i­ty blue-col­lar work­ers could be left in even more pre­car­i­ous and dis­ad­van­taged sit­u­a­tions due to the shift to remote work­ing, not only in the short term, but for years to come.

“We know from our research that Black and minor­i­ty-eth­nic peo­ple are fea­tur­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly in essen­tial work, as high-risk key work­ers,” says Nick Tre­loar, research ana­lyst at the Run­nymede Trust, a lead­ing inde­pen­dent race-equal­i­ty UK think tank. “It’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly and detri­men­tal­ly affect­ing them. Basi­cal­ly all the risk fac­tors are high­er for them.”

Tre­loar says the inequal­i­ties are not only a race issue, but one involv­ing class and pover­ty. “If you take Uber dri­vers, you have an over­whelm­ing num­ber of eth­nic minori­ties,” he says. “You’re ask­ing them to choose between putting food on the table and avoid get­ting the virus, which is a very hard choice to give them.”

Fac­tors such as low­er lev­els of sav­ings and the fact that Black and minor­i­ty eth­nic peo­ple tend to live with more peo­ple in small­er house­holds mean the impact of the pan­dem­ic has been par­tic­u­lar­ly severe on them, he adds.

What can be done to close the gap?

Tre­loar argues that gov­ern­ments could do a num­ber of things to help counter this inequal­i­ty, includ­ing pro­vid­ing tem­po­rary hous­ing for those who test pos­i­tive, offer­ing state-backed finan­cial sup­port for those who need to self-iso­late and there­fore can­not work, as well as help­ing to pro­vide IT equip­ment for those who can­not afford it.

“They could solve it quite eas­i­ly,” he says. “It would be bet­ter if the gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed the most vul­ner­a­ble with the tools they need. It’s time for action because race is still a social deter­mi­nant of health in 2020 and we know the solu­tions.”

Din­gel at Chica­go Uni­ver­si­ty believes a peri­od of sub­stan­tial exper­i­men­ta­tion is nec­es­sary on the part of com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments to help reduce inequal­i­ties for blue-col­lar work­ers. “Com­pa­nies, work­ers and gov­ern­ments are now explor­ing a much wider vari­ety of work­ing arrange­ments than before the pan­dem­ic,” he says. “There’s a lot of uncer­tain­ty because there’s a lot to learn.”

Gov­ern­ments must attempt to envis­age what aspects of remote work­ing will remain in the long term and what the impli­ca­tions of this are, adds Oxford’s Palomi­no. “Before it was a white-col­lar blue-col­lar divide, but now there will be those whose in-per­son work is restrict­ed ver­sus those whose work is unre­strict­ed and those who do remote work­ing,” he says. “The gov­ern­ment should ensure remote work­ing is pos­si­ble for as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, but we will always need peo­ple doing retail.”

Palomi­no says a form of fur­lough scheme may need to be made per­ma­nent to pro­vide bet­ter job secu­ri­ty for cer­tain indus­tries and this could be paid for in tax­es by indus­tries that have not suf­fered. “The gov­ern­ment has to realise not every­one has lost in eco­nom­ic terms to the same extent,” he says. “Poli­cies and tax schemes should adapt to this and those who have done well eco­nom­i­cal­ly may have to pay high­er tax­es to share the bur­den.”