Vice President JD Vance used a conversation about the “dignity of work” to argue that “a lot of the white-collar jobs that exist in our country are kind of bullshit.”During a podcast episode of “The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe” promoting his new book last week, Vance repeatedly contrasted blue-collar and white-collar work while discussing the Trump administration’s push to revive trade jobs and manufacturing.Dignified work — whether blue collar or white collar — is work that blesses someone and where somebody else benefits, said Rowe, the former host of Discovery’s hit series “Dirty Jobs.” Vance agreed, and suggested that, by that standard, many Americans’ jobs don’t measure up.“There are a lot of jobs, I think especially [those] that grew up in the COVID era, where people would sit at a laptop and not actually do much,” Vance said. “I think that moment in time drove home the fact that there are jobs that really do bless people, that really do build things that are meaningful, and then there are jobs that are kind of fake,” said Vance, whose 2022 Senate campaign was backed by prominent tech billionaires he met during his time as a Silicon Valley tech investor.Vance: A lot of the people who are going and getting 4-year degrees, they're not like engineers and doctors. They have fake jobs pic.twitter.com/HfWqV1z47K— FactPost (@factpostnews) July 10, 2026Later on in the interview, Vance fired shots at college grads. (Vance, who chronicled his working-class Ohio upbringing in the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” graduated from Ohio State University before earning a law degree from Yale Law School.)“A lot of the people who are going and getting four-year degrees, they’re not like engineers and doctors. They have fake jobs,” he told a smirking Rowe.Given that roughly 60% to 62% of the U.S. workforce is employed in white-collar occupations — many of which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as “management, professional, and related occupations” — Vance’s “fake jobs” remarks (made on a celebrity podcast, of all places) were certainly a choice. Union organizers weigh in on Vance’s not ‘real jobs’ commentsUnion workers and organizers in both blue-collar and white-collar industries bristled at Vance’s remarks. “JD Vance is only in the position he’s in because he’s a billionaire bootlicker, so it’s ironic that he would mock Americans who’ve had to work hard to earn their positions and achieve success and couldn’t rely on rich people to get them ahead,” said David Green, president and executive director of SEIU 721, a union representing government and healthcare employees throughout Southern California. Green said many of the 100,000 members of his union work primarily at desks, including government clerks, accountants, data analysts and IT professionals. That doesn’t make their work any less essential; modern office jobs often require specialized skills, particularly because so much of today’s work involves managing and navigating digitized records, he said.“You’d think someone whose bread was buttered by Silicon Valley oligarchs would know this,” Green said. “Maybe [Vance] should look up the job requirements for vice president if he wants to find a fake job. Apparently, the job allows for time to do book tours and podcasts.”Andrew Harnik via Getty Images"Maybe [Vance] should look up the job requirements for vice president if he wants to find a fake job. Apparently, the job allows for time to do book tours and podcasts," said David Green, president and executive director of SEIU 721, a union representing government and healthcare employees throughout Southern California. Tyler Turner, president of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, echoed that sentiment. “Vance’s accusation seems to be more of a confession from a man who has spent his vice presidency writing books few want to read, preventing the release of the Epstein files to protect his friends and being humiliated in negotiations with Iran,” he told HuffPost. “The hardworking professional workforce, such as those working people OPEIU represents, do not have fake jobs, but instead are responsible for all the behind-the-scenes work that keeps our global economy running,” he added. Valeria Espinosa, an organizer and national chairperson of AF3IRM, a feminist organization fighting imperialism globally, said Vance’s comments are particularly alienating toward women voters, who make up over 50% of management, professional and related white-collar jobs in the U.S.“This is yet another example of the devaluation of women’s labor,” she said. “Vance’s comments are consistent with Trump defining what constitutes ‘professional’ degrees, which dismisses fields like nursing, education, and social work ― jobs where women make up much of the workforce.”Klaus Vedfelt via Getty Images“This is yet another example of the devaluation of women’s labor,” said Valeria Espinosa, an organizer and national chairperson of AF3IRM, a feminist organization.What JD Vance gets wrong about the working class What Vance’s messaging gets wrong is that the clear distinction between blue-collar and white-collar work disappeared decades ago, according to Kate Bronfenbrenner, a senior lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.“Today we have a much broader definition of hard physical labor,” she said, noting that white-collar jobs take a toll physically, too. “Just ask the call-center worker whose job requires a college degree but must sit for hours on end, tethered to a keyboard and headset with every stroke and word monitored,” she said. “Or ask the nurse working a double 12-hour shift due to understaffing or the high-tech worker fresh out of college working through the night, coding data, with no benefits or job security.”Vance’s divisive rhetoric against highly educated elites and white-collar workers aligns with President Donald Trump’s efforts to court the white working class.The phrase “blue-collar jobs” has increasingly served as shorthand for “white conservative and right-leaning men,” as Salon’s Chauncey DeVega wrote recently, something that’s become even more apparent during the promotion of Vance’s latest book.″[Vance’s] books are best understood as products that serve Vance’s political brand as a working-class hero and MAGA royalty rather than functioning as introspective memoirs,” DeVega wrote. “Nonetheless, Vance is already attempting to use his identity as a working-class champion to win the 2028 Republican nomination — and ultimately, the presidency.”KEVIN LAMARQUE via Getty Images"I think he authentically despises highly educated professional-class people who attended Ivy League universities, despite being a highly educated professional-class person who attended an Ivy League university," said Jake Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology, of JD Vance. Here, the vice president tours the Nucor Steel factory in Huger, South Carolina, in May 2025.Vance “harbors nostalgia for working-class occupations that were disproportionately white and male,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a professor of sociology at Washington University-St. Louis and author of “You’re Paid What You’re Worth and Other Myths of the Modern Economy” ― jobs like the one Vance’s oft-referenced “union steelman” grandfather had back in the day, for instance.But the working class looks much different today, Rosenfeld said. ”[It’s] much more diverse — much more foreign-born and female, for example — than Vance seems to consider. Or wants to consider.” Rosenfeld said Vance is right to emphasize the value of well-paying jobs that don’t require a four-year college degree. For decades, politicians have overstated the idea that a bachelor’s degree is the only path to a stable, middle-class life, he said. And the pandemic did indeed underscore just how essential many non-college occupations are to keeping the economy running.“But what Vance failed to point out is that many of these jobs we belatedly recognized are essential to our daily lives — food deliverers and preparers, nurses’ assistants, and so on — are often unstable, poorly paid and offer little opportunity for advancement,” he said.Bill Pugliano via Getty ImagesVance speaks at Engineering Design Services on March 18 in Auburn Hills, Michigan.Instead, throughout the interview, Vance extolled the skilled trades ― jobs that pay considerably more than the majority of working-class occupations today. There are over four times as many home health care and personal aides in the U.S. today as there are welders and brick masons combined.“Where’s the focus on them?” Rosenfeld said. “If really a defender of the working class, you need to update your outdated understandings of what types of jobs constitute the working class to incorporate the millions upon millions of people out there preparing our food, taking care of our aging relatives, all the while earning far too little.”Vance’s “fake jobs” critique also overlooks another reality, the professor said: Many Americans — including white-collar workers — find genuine meaning in what they do. More than two-thirds of U.S. workers report being satisfied with their jobs.“Railing against all these fake jobs out there runs the risk of turning off many workers who may have gone to college, may sit behind a desk much of the day typing away, but who nonetheless enjoy their work and believe they are contributing to the world through it,” Rosenfeld said. “People like JD Vance.”While Vance’s focus on blue-collar work may be politically strategic — as the midterms approach and support among white working-class voters appears to be slipping amid economic concerns and stalled blue-collar job growth linked to tariffs — his criticism of highly educated Americans seems to go beyond politics. It appears personal.“I think he authentically despises highly educated professional-class people who attended Ivy League universities, despite being a highly educated professional-class person who attended an Ivy League university,” Rosenfeld said.