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Not “shock” precisely, but definitely an interesting surprise to me. Thanks for posting this

This is still common in many places.

I remember reading somewhere that some items in IKEA were essentially home made in places like India or Vietnam. Things like brooms and rugs.

Heh that sounds like the workers worked from home while management had to go in.

I think in this setting (WFH) blue collar job also means hospital jobs, restaurant, r&d lab workers, teachers, sales etc, i.e. any kind of job where one cannot physically work from home.

Yes imagine if the physical requirements of those jobs were rewarded with some type of additional monetary compensation, given the demands placed upon the workers...

When covid first hit I was working with a lot of laboratory scientists in R&D. I can promise you that even the most gifted scientists weren't making a substantial monetary premium, except for the handful who were individually responsible for breakthroughs that led to commercially successful pharmaceutical products.

The market for laboratory scientists is fairly saturated and the wages are much lower than you might expect, given the relative importance of the work to society.