There’s a book called How Capitalism Ends by a guy named Steve Paxton, it’s that largely libbed up brand of trot brit socialism but it did have some good points interspersed, one in particular I’m thinking of here is an argument for making a distinction between a “technocracy” and the rest of the working class:

It’s important to note that the technocracy are not excluded from the proletariat because they earn too much money, or because they enjoy a large degree of autonomy in their work. It is the effective (though incomplete) control they exercise over productive assets by virtue of their technical knowledge that separates them from the proletariat. They make largely autonomous decisions about how and where productive assets will be deployed, and the expert knowledge which gives them the ability to do so puts them in a different relationship to both the means of production and to the bourgeoisie than that of the proletarian. At the same time, they do not enjoy the full range of ownership rights over the assets they control – they cannot sell or bequeath them for example. This limitation sets them apart from the petty-bourgeoisie.

I kind of like this distinction in this context, might be more prudent than labor aristocrat in describing some folks