Welcome to a special edition of This Is Robotics for a special look at the "New Collar" Workforce.

Robot-Driven Automation's "New Collar" Workforce

Vitally needed workers for robot-driven manufacturing, and just maybe, the revitalization of America’s middle class.

They’re definitely a new breed!
Don’t call them blue collar and don’t call them white collar. Blue, many perceive as life-long drudgery with a wasted body by the age of fifty, and white as onerous college debt with the worst ROI imaginable.

They avoid large factories and mega warehouses where for every robot deployed three jobs go missing. Besides, those gigs are way up there on the blue-collar drudgery meter. They also shun white-collar offices that track keystrokes, screen email, and surveil worker productivity.

Around them, the world is just beginning to make room for their kind and see value in their non-traditional worldview. Colleges have dropped the SAT. Law schools jettisoned the LSAT. And now employers large and small are dropping the college degree requirement on resumes. A move that seems reasonable since 66% of the country’s population is without a college degree.

See related: States Are Leading the Effort to Remove Degree Requirements from Government Jobs.

As the NYT blared in a headline, which must have put a smile on the faces of all these new-breed contrarians: “Emerging fields like AI, EVs, and robotics feel like a new age in jobs is beginning to settle in, jobs that require advanced skills but not necessarily advanced degrees.”

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