Dirty Work: The Return of Blue Collar

The article tends to gloss over the core economic issue.

Pay for a particular job is not really about the label attached to the work. Pay tends to correlate with the number of capable people available to do it.

In other words --- it's really all about supply and demand.

"Dirty work" often tends to pay less simply because more people are available to do the work --- i.e. low skills required. When supply of capable workers exceeds demand, pay tends to decline.

Decreased demand can also lead to over supply of non-dirty workers too. If AI can do the job, the demand for "skilled" human workers may decline --- and so will the pay for these jobs.