‘New-Collar’ Jobs: Is This the Future of Work?

As artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates change across industries, “new-collar” jobs are becoming the backbone of the new economy — blending technical fluency, manual capability and continual adaptability, according to a recent LinkedIn report.

These roles sit between white- and blue-collar positions and are defined less by degrees and more by skills, opening the door to a fresh workforce type. For HR and total rewards (TR) professionals, this trend signals a shift from compensating for fixed roles and toward rewarding skills, said Priya Rathod, the workplace trends editor at employment website Indeed.

“Upskilling and reskilling make a strong case for looking inward first. … Existing employees already understand the business and can step into new needs much faster with the right training than someone hired from the outside,” she said.

As employers turn to more skills-based talent models, HR and TR leaders should rethink how rewards occur and how roles, including those considered “new-collar,” are structured and defined.

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What Are New-Collar Jobs?

According to Indeed, new-collar employees may receive their education through community colleges, technical or trade schools, software boot camps, certification programs, apprenticeships, or or internships. Depending on the role, some employees may even be self-taught.

Many new-collar roles involve digital-enabled work and most fall into four profession categories:

• Healthcare
• Engineering
• Technology
• Software

“New-collar jobs are taking off because technology is moving faster than traditional education can keep up,” Rathod said. “What we’re really seeing is AI changing aspects of jobs, not wiping out entire roles.”

For example, October 2025 data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab showed only 1% of skills are likely to be fully transformed by AI. About 40% of skills are expected to be minimally transformed, while 19% could see assisted transformation and another 40% fall into hybrid transformation, where humans and AI collaborate.

In this hybrid form, new-collar employees are essential in areas AI can’t replicate, said Meisha-Ann Martin, a vice president and the head of people research at employee recognition and rewards platform Workhuman.

She described new-collar work as the intersection of technical fluency and human-centric skills such as learning agility, adaptability, prioritization, ethical decision-making and collaboration.

“The best new-collar workers aren’t just good with tech tools; they’re good at making tools useful in [complicated] real-world conditions,” Martin said.

How AI Is Driving New-Collar Work

The LinkedIn report found more than 1.3 million AI-related job opportunities have been created in the past two years. Some of these roles didn’t exist five years ago but are now essential to digital economies. As a result, job descriptions are evolving to keep up. Indeed’s Rathod said job descriptions will continue to shift focus from degree requirements to specific job-essential skills and capabilities.

“It’s creating demand for very specific skills that employers need immediately, not years down the line,” she said. “The companies still filtering candidates by degree are optimizing for a workforce that no longer exists.”

Integrating New-Collar Workers

As new-collar roles grow, HR and TR professionals should rethink how to structure, develop and reward workers through skill-centric strategies.

According to the experts interviewed in this article, key plan elements include:

• Building a flexible job architecture. Rather than relying on static job families, redesigned frameworks will be constructed from an aggregation of tasks, each assigned to either a human or AI, moving toward a more dynamic, skill- and task-based structure. This shift can complicate compensation and career pathways, said Rey Ramirez, the co-founder of Thrive HR Consulting. “The biggest challenge is that market surveys are still tied to job titles, education, years of experience and how many people report to you, to value a job,” he said. “Valuing technical skills, certifications and on-the-job training in new-collar jobs is going to be a challenge.” 
• Associating rewards with desired behavior. Align rewards with the behaviors needed in a new-collar environment: learning, collaboration, knowledge-sharing and raising standards, said Workhuman’s Martin. She also suggested developing a work environment where leaders can address where work gets stuck, where skills are being practiced and which teams are adapting fastest.
• Creating a culture of continuous upskilling. Rathod said HR and TR leaders should view upskilling as more than a one-and-done training event since skills are constantly changing in a new-collar world. “Skills now drive long-term value more than job titles, which means a lot of learning has to happen on the job,” she said. Continuous upskilling also supports clearer career pathways. “Many upskilling programs fall short because they’re built around static roles or don’t quite align with real-time skill demand,” Rathod added. “The better model treats learning like a product — continuously updated, tied to real-time signal from the labor market and built around where skills are heading, not where they've been.”

As AI evolves and skill-valued new-collar roles increase, organizations should adapt to meet this changing workforce.

“The organizations that pull ahead won’t be the ones with the most AI tools,” Martin said. “They’ll be the ones that can continuously redeploy talent because they can see human skills in motion.”

Editor’s Note: Additional Content

For more information and resources related to this article, see the pages below, which offer quick access to all WorldatWork content on these topics:

• Career Growth
• Employee Recognition
• Total Rewards