Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or relating to skilled knowledge workers, traditionally classified as white-collar, but essential to a business.
  • adjective Of or relating to young, low-wage workers who invest in conspicuous luxury.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Compare blue-collar, white-collar, and see gold ("precious metal").

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Examples

  • Within the working class, Synovate found 61% were blue collar - but they predict that as the service industry grows and college gets pricier in celebrity-obsessed America, the gold-collar group will flourish.

    THE NEWS BLOG 2005

  • Toward the end of the 1990s, as elite knowledge workers became scarce or mobile enough to strike good deals for themselves, they caused all sorts of corporate complaining about the pampering of coders who acted like teenagers and the rise of a bratty class of "gold-collar workers".

    Eurozine articles Christopher Newfield 2010

  • Toward the end of the 1990s, as elite knowledge workers became scarce or mobile enough to strike good deals for themselves, they caused all sorts of corporate complaining about the pampering of coders who acted like teenagers and the rise of a bratty class of "gold-collar workers".

    Eurozine articles Christopher Newfield 2010

  • Mostly they're gold-collar workers who want to add some diamonds to the mix.

    US Market Commentary from Seeking Alpha 2010

  • Toward the end of the 1990s, as elite knowledge workers became scarce or mobile enough to strike good deals for themselves, they caused all sorts of corporate complaining about the pampering of coders who acted like teenagers and the rise of a bratty class of "gold-collar workers".

    Eurozine articles Christopher Newfield 2010

  • Toward the end of the 1990s, as elite knowledge workers became scarce or mobile enough to strike good deals for themselves, they caused all sorts of corporate complaining about the pampering of coders who acted like teenagers and the rise of a bratty class of "gold-collar workers".

    Eurozine articles 2010

  • Talks about new concept of gold-collar workers: people who are critical to a company or organization who aren't office workers or skilled manual laborers - people who have interactions with technology to move things along or report status, but it isn't necessarily the key part of their job.

    Wi-Fi Networking News 2009

  • The latest addition to this list of "chromatic" collar terms is gold-collar, a word too new to be included in even the most recently published dictionary.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XII No 3 1986

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