Ending the labor shortage could mean offering more. to blue-collar workers, experts say.
Samantha Lee/Insider
The tight labor market has empowered many employees to ask for more from their employers.
Experts say that offering blue collar workers “white collar” perks is one way out of the crunch.
That means offering bonuses, robust benefits, and opportunities for professional growth.
Throughout the pandemic, businesses have touted perks like sign-on bonuses. Others have raised wages. But experts say that companies should go even further as they reconsider compensation for many crucial blue-collar jobs that are struggling with staffing.
Mathieu Stevenson, CEO of hourly work online marketplace Snagajob, told Insider that he believes that “compensation and benefits that have typically been reserved for white-collar employees have now become expectations and norms in blue-collar jobs.” He called the phenomenon the “white-collar-ization of blue-collar jobs.”
Stevenson listed sign-on bonuses, educational benefits touted by industry giants like Amazon and Walmart, career path guidance, maternity and paternity leave, and mental health benefits as potential offerings that could bolster retention rates in blue-collar gigs.
Businesses that don’t adapt to bring these offerings to the table will be the ones left under-staffed, according to Andrew Duffy, founder and CEO of Sparkplug, a software company specializing in incentive management for retail workers.
“The best workers will filter into the places where they’re rewarded the most,” Duffy said. “The businesses that are not able to acquire those workers and who aren’t using these new systems of rewarding their workers in more meaningful ways for everything that they’re doing, they’re not going to survive.”
And some hiring models are just simply out of touch with the reality of what a modern worker wants from their job. Some industries that are especially struggling, including supply chain and warehousing, often rely on staffing agencies to hire seasonal workers.
This outdated temp model, for example, needs to be replaced by a culture of professional development, traditionally a staple of white-collar jobs, Dan Johnston, the founder and CEO of logistics solutions provider WorkStep, told Insider. That means creating a pipeline that allows entry-level workers to gain skills and advance into harder-to-fill, specialized roles, “signaling to everybody within your organization: This is a company that’s willing to invest in you, if you are willing to invest in us,” Johnston said.
Quincy Valencia, the vice president of product innovation at the hiring platform Hourly by AMS, began her career in retail management. She said that, historically, companies have made the mistake of viewing many blue-collar workers as “replaceable.”
“This category of worker – particularly in retail – has driven our economy over the past, especially here through this pandemic,” she said. “And now there’s a big mismatch right now between job availability and applicants for those jobs.”
But there’s been a shift in that thinking. During the pandemic, many frontline workers were hailed as heroes and labeled “essential.” And some companies are starting to take note.
“We all depend on these folks,” Maggie Barnett, the COO of logistics provider ShipHero, told Insider. “During COVID, most people were sitting at home. Thank goodness that everyone who went into the warehouses did what they did so that we could all have our luxuries. They should be rewarded and they should be noticed. That acknowledgement has been too long overdue.”
30. Commercial and industrial equipment electrical and electronics repairers had a median annual salary of $62,010, and 55,200 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Repair, test, adjust, or install electronic equipment, such as industrial controls, transmitters, and antennas.
29. First-line supervisors of production and operating workers had a median annual salary of $62,850, and 599,900 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Supervise production workers and machine operators.
28. Construction and building inspectors had a median annual salary of $62,860, and 113,770 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Inspect buildings and other structures to make sure they are in safe condition and comply with building codes and other regulations.
27. Occupational therapy assistants had a median annual salary of $62,940, and 42,750 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Assist occupational therapists in treatments and other procedures.
26. Pile-driver operators had a median annual salary of $63,370, and 3,820 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Operate pile-drivers that install piles for building foundations and other construction projects.
25. Wood model makers had a median annual salary of $64,050, and 800 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Construct full-size and scale wooden precision models of products.
24. Fire inspectors and investigators had a median annual salary of $64,610, and 14,010 were employed in the US.
Associated Press/Lisa Rathke
What they do, according to O*NET: Inspect buildings for fire hazards and to enforce fire ordinances, or investigate fires to find their causes.
23. Stationary engineers and boiler operators had a median annual salary of $64,680, and 29,550 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Operate boilers or similar machinery to provide heat or other utilities to buildings or for industrial processes.
22. Wood patternmakers had a median annual salary of $65,120, and 190 were employed in the US.
Akhtar Soomro/Reuters
What they do, according to O*NET: Plan and make wooden patterns for forming sand molds for castings.
21. Boilermakers had a median annual salary of $65,360, and 14,020 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Build and maintain steam boilers and related equipment.
20. Police and sheriff’s patrol officers had a median annual salary of $65,540, and 654,900 were employed in the US.
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What they do, according to O*NET: Patrol a designated area to enforce laws and prevent crime.
19. Chemical plant and system operators had a median annual salary of $65,960, and 29,710 were employed in the US.
What they do, according to O*NET: Operate and maintain nuclear reactors in power plants.
Method and data source
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program releases annual estimates for employment and earnings for hundreds of detailed occupational groups. Using data from May 2020, the most recent period available, we found 30 traditionally blue-collar jobs with high median annual earnings.
All of the jobs on the list earned more than $60,000 in 2020, above the overall median annual earning of $41,950. Some of the jobs are operators and first-line supervisors of different sectors.
The above slides are the 30 occupations from those groups that had the highest median annual earnings in 2020, along with the number of people employed in the US in each job and a description of what workers in the occupation do, according to the Labor Department’s O*NET Online jobs database.
