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New collars … bright collars: will blue-and white-collar concerns be nudged aside by the growing strength of today's new- and bright-collar voters?

Psychology Today - October 1, 1988

DURING 1968, when I covered my first Presidential campaign as a reporter, most of the electorate still fell easily into two groups, white-collar and blue-collar voters. I saw them at plant gates and shopping malls, counted their heads at rallies and speeches and asked for their comments on the street. They are still familiar types (see "Blue Collars, White Collars," this article).

This year's Presidential candidates face a sharply different electorate. There are still plenty of blue- and white-collar voters, but they're now in the minority. During the last two decades, as the entire baby-boom generation and almost half of the baby-bust generation have reached voting age, two new breeds of voters have altered the face and character of the American electorate. I call them "bright collars" and "new collars."

To understand them, I've reviewed census data, studied nationwide opinion surveys from the 1950s and 1980s, conducted interviews across the country and held group discussions in Nashua, New Hampshire; Des Moines, Iowa; Lexington and Framington, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio; Bellevue, Washington; and Sacramento, California.

The bright-collar voters are the 20 million knowledge workers born since 1945: lawyers and teachers, architects and social workers, accountants and budget analysts, engineers and consultants, rising executives and midlevel administrators. They earn their living by taking intellectual initiatives. They face the luxury and the necessity of making their own decisions on the job and in their personal lives.

Bright-collar people lack the touchstones that guided white-collar workers in the 1950s and 1960s. The white collars believed in institutions; bright collars are skeptical of them. The corporate chain of command, a strong force in white-collar life then, is far weaker for bright collars now. They place a premium on individuality, on standing out rather than fitting in. Although the older white collars knew the rules and played by them, bright collars can't be sure what the rules are and must think up their own. The white collars were organization men and women; bright collars are self-entrepreneurs interested in building careers for themselves outside big corporations.

Computer software engineers are typical bright-collar workers. Drawing on both their formal training and continual on-the-job learning, they design and test, refine and enhance software packages and systems. Their work places a premium on the ability to formulate hypotheses and test them against experience.

People ask me if bright collar is merely a synonym for yuppie. The answer is basically no. The word "yuppie" has come to stand for a relatively small group, roughly one and a half million people, who share a set of values--self-absorption, materialism, careerism--that don't define the much larger bright-collar group. Virtually all yuppies are bright collars, but only a few bright collars are yuppies.

The blue collars have given ground in these younger generations to new collars, the almost 30 million service workers born since 1945. Neither manual laborers nor coat-and-tie professionals, they make their living in the rapidly growing range between those two extremes. They work as secretaries and clerks, customer-service representatives and inside sales people, underwriters and telephone operators, bank tellers and administrative assistants, police officers and keypunch operators. They often avoid the grime and regimentation of blue-collar work, without quite gaining the freedom of bright-collar work.

Federal Express truck drivers are typical new-collar workers. They design pickup and delivery routes, explain the company's services and fees, provide mailing supplies and handle relatively sophisticated information technology in their trucks. They aren't traditional truck drivers so much as sales clerks in an office on wheels.

Bright collars make up 35 percent of the workers in these younger generations. Unlike the white-collar workplace of 20 years ago, today's bright-collar workplace isn't a male province: Half the bright collars are women. Only 10 percent of the bright collars are veterans and 5 percent are blacks. Although there are about equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans and independents, most voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and again in 1984.

New collars make up 40 percent of the workers in these younger generations. Unlike the blue-collar world of yesterday and today, the new-collar workplace is largely pink: Two-thirds of new collars are women. Only 8 percent are veterans. Almost half of the blue-collar workers of the 1960s were union members; just 13 percent of today's new collars belong to unions. Virtually all hold high school diplomas, many have tried college or grade school and 14 percent have college degrees. Fourteen percent are black. Thirty-five percent are Democrats, 23 percent are Republicans, 41 percent are independents. They voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Ronald Reagan in 1984.

What chiefly distinguishes these new breeds from the older types, I find, is how they new economic and social changes. The older white- and blue-collar voters see them as dangerous, because that's precisely what the changes have been for them. Bright-and new-collar voters view change as a source of opportunity, since that's what it's meant to them.

The swift upheaval in American economic life during the last 20 years has been hardest on older workers. The blue collars were the first to be hurt by the intense foreign competition of the 1970s and 1980s. The $15-an-hour steelworker in south Chicago suddenly found himself eclipsed by the $1-an-hour steelworker in South Korea. As the layoffs continued, the blue-collar share of the work force dropped sharply, from almost 40 percent in the 1950s to roughly 25 percent of younger workers today. To cut costs further, hard-pressed American companies then went lean and mean, ousting many of their older white-collar workers through retirements, buyouts and outright firings.

The same economic changes have opened doors for younger knowledge workers and service workers as the number of these bright- and new-collar jobs has grown dramatically. Some of these workers are globally competitive. The creative young software designers in Boston, for example, outperform their competitors in Tokyo. And some are merely insulated against foreign competition. Even as the auto plant in Detroit loses its share of what is now a global market for cars, the bank just a mile away keeps its share of what is still a local market for checking accounts. Blue-collar jobs on the assembly line are casualties, but new-collar jobs at the customer-service desk increase.

The biggest social change of the last 20 years, of course, has been the emergence of women, particularly those in the baby-boom and baby-bust generations. Economically, most of these younger workers have taken jobs in the knowledge and service fields. Socially, they're looking for new ways to balance the opportunities and pressures of home and workplace. Politically, they make their own voting decisions.

Brian and Cheryl, a bright-collar couple in their late 20s, married shortly after they finished college at Ohio State and now live in a modest suburb of Cleveland. With family help, they've bought a small bungalow on a street lined with similar houses. They expect their first child early next year.

Cheryl teaches third grade in a nearby suburb. After several years of evening courses at Cleveland State, she recently earned her master's degree in education, with special emphasis on the use of computers in the classroom. Her 8-year-old students use computers for number drills and to work problem-solving exercises. She also teaches them general keyboard skills and word processing and has begun teaching an adult evening class in programming.

Right after college, Brian worked as a low-level manager for a lawn mower distributor and became interested in new approaches to management. "I got In Search of Excellence and read it twice." To strengthen the company's ties to several major customers, he began advising and helping them any way he could, "looking for ways to give them value." He also enrolled as a night student at Cleveland Marshall College of Law. (A couple of years ago, the couple's annual tuition bill was $8,000).

Today, he practices law in a downtown firm, but he's using his earlier business experience to build a clientele of younger entrepreneurial companies that are open to fresh management ideas. "I want to be more than just a lawyer," Brian told me. "I want my clients to be able to consult me on business strategy, too."

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