English

Alternative forms

• gray collar
• grey-collar, grey collar (mainly UK)

Adjective

gray-collar ‎(comparative more gray-collar, superlative most gray-collar)

1. Of or pertaining to working-class professions that do not involve significant manual labor, such as skilled technical professions, combining elements of blue-collar and white-collar.
   • 1963, R. Robb Taylor (editor), University and community; proceedings of a conference, April 25-26, 1963, under the auspices of the Association of Urban Universities and the Johnson Foundation, page 58,

     But if you look at the employment trends in the country, you find that the white-collar (and gray-collar) activities have become increasingly important...

   • 1964, National Ice Association: Forty-Seventh Annual Convention, Democratic Party Convention, OK State Fed of Labor

     Your present plan is rated, not for the so-called blue collar people, it’s rated for white-collar and that thin gray line, the gray-collar worker. In many small businesses you don’t know who is blue-collar and who is white-collar, the boss often doing all kinds of work around the firm.

   • 1971, Richard Patrick Coleman, Social Status in the City, Jossey-Bass, page 68,

     At the lower-middle level, the typical Negro male was a gray-collar worker in one of the civil services, worked for the railroads as a Pullman porter or dining car waiter, or owned a small business.

   • 1989, United States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S. Efforts to Commercialize Superconductivity: Hearing Before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Government Printing Office, page 152,

     Vocational training reaches greater fractions of the labor force in nations like West Germany; large Japanese companies invest more heavily in job-related training for blue- and gray-collar employees than do American firms.

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