कृषिगौरक्ष्यवाणिज्यं वैश्यकर्म स्वभावजम्।परिचर्यात्मकं कर्म शूद्रस्यापि स्वभावजम्॥
kṛṣi-gau-rakṣya-vāṇijyaṃ vaiśya-karma svabhāva-jamparicaryātmakaṃ karma śūdrasyāpi svabhāva-jam
Word by word
The verse says
Farming, caring for cattle and trade: this is the work of the producing kind, born of their nature. And work that takes the form of service belongs to the serving kind, also born of their nature.
In plain words
The third and fourth groups, in a single verse, and the fourth gets half a line.
Farming, cattle, trade. Then service.
That compression is itself part of the record. The group given the least space in the text is the one that was given the least of everything else for the next two thousand years.
Where you've felt this · at work
A dairy farmer, a man who sells vegetables from a cart, and the woman who cleans the stairwell of your building are all doing work without which nothing else in your week happens. Two of the three could stop for a day and you would notice by lunchtime. All three are paid least and spoken to least.
Going deeper
The brevity given to the fourth group here is worth noticing rather than passing over.
The priestly list gets nine qualities and a verse of its own. The ruling list gets seven and a verse of its own. The producing and serving groups share one verse between them, and the serving group gets four words. Whatever the intention, the proportion of attention matches the proportion of regard that followed.
It also shows a change of kind. The first two groups are described by character. The last two are described by activity. One is who you are; the other is what you do, which is much easier to make hereditary and much easier to impose.
The honest thing is to say that this asymmetry is in the text, not only in its interpreters. Reading it carefully does not make it disappear, and a reader is better served by seeing it than by being steered around it.