it’s also far less unskilled than people assign credit for. all work is knowledge work
I feel like, especially here in the US, what unskilled means has changed to “any job that doesn’t require a college degree”.
We seem to have almost completely forgotten about apprenticeships and similar career paths.
Right but the point being made is that all jobs are skilled and the ones that people get with no degree and no apprenticeship and no career path to speak of, are the people holding society together. Grocery workers, postal workers, service industry workers, etc. Society is fine if every single private equity firm disappeared over night, it’s absolutely not fine without the grocerers, and truck drivers and everyone else doing the “unskilled” labor.
I think you might be making an assumption that I wasn’t. Personally I would consider the examples you gave as similar to an apprenticeship, at least in the context of what I was trying to say in my original comment.
all work is knowledge work
No. This is the follow on to “I didn’t read the definition of unskilled labor” vis a vis “I didn’t read the definition of knowledge work”
People take offense to the “unskilled” part, and it’s just a stupid nitpick. Unskilled doesn’t mean that it’s an unimportant doofus jobs, it means it’s a job that almost anyone can do. That doesn’t make it unimportant.
Everyone can help haul stuff at a construction site. Everyone can collect garbage bags around the city. Everyone can deliver mail and packages. These jobs require no special education, you can literally get hired and start tomorrow without any training. But that does not make the job unimportant.
This post just feels like the person looks for another wording to be mad about.
Usually people use the term “unskilled labor” as justification that those working said jobs don’t have any skills and therefore shouldn’t earn a living wage.
The anger isn’t in the denotation of the term, but the connotation.
It’s usually a lower wage because of supply and demand but yeah any wage should be a living wage skilled or not.
Yeah you have to remember to look at it through the conservative lens where humanity is inherently hierarchical and social darwinism means the lesser tiers of society do not deserve your attention.
it means it’s a job that almost anyone can do
Not exactly. Unskilled labor simply refers to jobs that do not require a formal certification. There are many economically unskilled jobs that require a high amount of expertise. One such example is often a chef (specifically, the ones which don’t have formal culinary education).
Chefs need to have a deep understanding of food preparation techniques, flavor profiles, food safety, menu planning, and the ability to work quickly and efficiently in a high-pressure environment. It is a demanding job that few people can do. Yet, according to economics, these people would be unskilled.
Personally, part of me believes that people shouldn’t nitpick the percieved inaccuracy of jargon based upon the usage of words in common parlance.
The other part of me wishes that the experts would have chosen a less polarizing term with more neutral connotations.
While I agree with your point, Chef is definitely a skilled labour job. Literally need qualifications in food safety, if you don’t in whatever country you’re from that is more horrifying than it not being classed as skilled tbh.
From the country I’m from, you can open your own small restaurant without any qualifications.
Yes, I’m afraid to dine out when I return there during vacations.
There’s nothing special required to open a restaurant in Sweden, which I think most would agree is a developed country. You need a business license and a food license (unsure how to translate), neither of which requires an education or training, and you need a proper location for preparing and serving food. Employees can be literally anyone off the street. You have to pass health inspections, but the inspectors don’t care much about details if nothing dangerous is going on.
I personally appreciate your example of chef and had to delete the rest of what I had to say because it got way too emotional. It’s a frustrating situation when you’re making people happy by providing a service and still not being rewarded because capitalism.
I would not consider chef as “unskilled labor”
It’s not. Not even “economically”.
A chef is a skilled job. Because you need skill.
Flipping frozen burger patties is an unskilled job. Because you don’t need any skill.
There are a number of skills that go into working fast food, and your dismissal of them is part of the problem.
Yes, there’s a number of skills that go into putting your clothes in the morning as well. But any able-bodied human can do the job with a day of training.
This isn’t true. Watch some POV videos of people working fast food jobs. No one is saying that McDonald’s and vascular surgery require the same amount of skill and training, but that’s not the point. We need to recognize that what’s considered menial is quite complex. Look at how long it’s taking to replace people doing basic jobs with machines.
That’s a junk ending. You try to replace anything with a machine. It’s nontrivial. But then, to come full circle, it’s a skilled labor job ;).
Yes, in a company of a million employees some are extra fast and make a show if it to get Youtube views. Watch people at McDonald’s WITHOUT YouTube (scary, I know) and you’ll see that it’s just some dudes flipping burgers. Like anyone does on a weekend.
Yes, a monkey couldn’t do it, but that’s not the definition of skilled vs unskilled.
A chef is not skilled according to economics. However, “skill” as used in common literature and speech, still applies to these uncertified chefs.
By this uncommon and misinterpreted definition a master sword maker would also be unskilled. Which is not how common literature, speech, nor economics applies it.
I feel like this is falling down the same trap though. Ex. Someone who’s picked strawberries for 5 years is going to be FAST.
They are effectively a skilled laborer even though the job itself is “unskilled”. Yes anyone “can” do it but there are those who have effectively been doing it for years who are great at it and are skilled at it.
We started calling them “essential workers” when we needed them and now they’re back to “unskilled labor”. The language a society uses says a lot about their values.
I vote we call them ‘core contributors’ from now on.
I rememebe when they were called them heroes during covid, but received no increase in pay and were treated like shit again the moment the vaccine existed.
ah yes, you helped save society from collapse. Here’s a gold star and a rent increase. Thank you!
Being good is its own reward!
(I’m not a hero, so I’ll take your money as mine.)
Yeah, it’s also interesting that we almost never say “skilled work”. It’s just work vs. ‘Unskilled’. Might as well just stop with the division (which is only useful to billionaires and people in finance). Divide and conquer, I guess…
I’m afraid it would become another marketing/HR term. We call you Core Contributors, which makes it seem like we’re being nice to you, behind which curtain we can mess you around and take more of your output for ourselves.
To be honest I rather have people be nice to my face and screw me over behind my back, over them treating me like shit and also screw me over. ‘At least they’re being honest’ is overrated.
It’s only really a measure of how easy you are to replace.
Skilled or unskilled. If you do a full day’s work, you should be able to support yourself and family.
We should also take care of those that are unable to do so.
No labor is unskilled it’s classist bullshit to make us think we’re better than each other. Farm work especially so since there are weird local tricks for local planting styles and crops.
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Which is exactly the point of the post: there is no such thing as unskilled labour. This label must die
that’s such a pedantic point
Well, I do respond in kind to dumb attempts at arguing
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Ive taken many economic courses, none of which talk about “skilled” or “unskilled labour”. They do, however, brainwash the fuck out of you into believing the post-scarcity capilist need for ever increasing profits not only makes sense, but is a necessary facet of society.
I studied economics in college, currently looking for a job in the public sector, fuck profit
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It’s derogatory and innacurate description, workers aren’t a commodity. Having a college degree doesn’t mean you’re a specialist. You don’t have to have a certification or degree to be skilled. Economist isn’t a skilled job because you can’t predict the future, it’s a self fullfilling prophecy when you apply your own perceptions into descision making. Not everything is a predictable pattern.
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It’s not a science, it’s a cult.
Just because it’s a term you learned in school doesn’t mean it’s not used to hold people back. The term is used to imply that people who aren’t skilled don’t deserve a living wage and lots of voters fall for it and push the narrative that if you flip burgers you don’t deserve to pay rent on time and go to the movies on the same month.
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In scenarios such as this, its better to spread the word about the original intention of the phrase, rather than blaming it.
Good news don’t travel so fast. Changing the term to something harder to make derogatory would be a much better solution.
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It’s an emotional response to point out how a word has been used to keep people from being paid what they’re worth? I think it’s an emotional response to cling so hard to a word that could very easily be changed and hurt no one.
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No, why do you think that is the case? Most wages are paid out based on what the market fr that job pays not based on whether it is skilled or unskilled. My brother makes more in sales (unskilled) than my buddy who is a neurosurgeon.
Because I’ve heard people use it as an excuse for why minimum wage shouldn’t cover bills and they vote accordingly. Language matters.
It’s scientific jargon. If you are having an emotional response to it that’s not the fault if the field.
Scientific jargon can and has changed to better represent what they’re talking about no reason this can’t either unless that makes some people too… emotional.
You are having a purely emotional response to scientific jargon.
We’re humans who have emotional responses to things, and we should be cognizant of that when choosing our words. We should also be aware of how bad actors may use our words to manipulate public opinion via those emotions.
We don’t use things like mongoloid or crippled anymore even though they were once considered perfectly acceptable medical terms. Unskilled is inherently derogatory, and the thesaurus is offering alternatives such as fundamental, foundational, or generalized. I like generalized labor the best so far, because it contrasts perfectly with specialized.
Mate, this is very meta with the OP in a bad way. Dismissing someone this way really goes against the values here. Not everyone had the chance to take higher education courses. And not having that chance does not invalidate immediately their views.
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Lol. Did I say “label” or “concept”? You would know the difference if you had taken linguistics/logic courses, but alas
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Fun fact: it is not
Unfortunately while this is “a” definition of skilled and unskilled labor, this is not how the media uses the term.
When the media refers to unskilled labor, they are absolutely not referring to wine importers. Or middle managers, or authors, or interior decorators, or any of the countless jobs that do not require any special training other than a non-specific college degree.
When they are referring to unskilled labor, they are referring to work that pays criminally low wages. That’s it.
Skilled workers are persons who are capable of performing skilled labor and whose job requires at least 2 years training or experience, not of a temporary or seasonal nature.
According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (archive) a commercial truck driver - who requires special certification in the form of a Commercial Driver’s License - is an unskilled laborer.
Can you tell my skill at say driving a forklift from that title?
Sorry, but forklift certification takes less than two years. A forklift driver is not a skilled laborer according to the USCIS or the media.
I acknowledge that the citizenship service isn’t the department of labor, but the department of labor doesn’t appear to use the terms “unskilled” and “skilled” at all. They use a more nuanced categorization of five “zones” of skill/certification instead. Probably due to the issues discussed in this post.
This spawned a long comment-chain argument, which I ran out of headspace to properly read and analyse, but I just want to say thank you to you both for arguing in (what looks like) good faith with citations and well expressed logic. It’s a credit to the community.
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Skilled labor refers to jobs that require certification and training that imply specific distinct skill sets. For example if I tell you Im a mason, a plumber, or a radiologist you know exactly what my skills are.
My point was my job title does not imply any specific skills not that forklift operators are skilled labor (which I never claimed).
Oh, okay, sorry, I misunderstood. I think I follow now, and I’m sorry to say that your position is simply incorrect. Your stance on the CDL doesn’t make any sense. It’s not skilled because “commercial truck driver” doesn’t describe the types of vehicles you can drive?
According to the United States Government, a radiologist is not a skilled laborer OR an unskilled laborer, they are a Professional. A member of the Professions.
Nothing supports your definition that I can find. At all. Skilled labor refers to the skills you need to do the labor. Skilled labor does not refer to job titles that self-describe their skills. “Mason” is a skilled laborer because it describes what you do?
Masonry requires no special certifications at all. In fact, according to the USCIS, a mason isn’t a skilled laborer.(edit - there are masonry licenses, apologies for the mistake)By your logic, “Warehouse Porter” with a forklift certification is not skilled labor, but “Forklift operator” would be a skilled laborer? They need special training, and the title describes exactly what they do, right?
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Sorry. You’re really hung up on an outdated academic definition that just isn’t accurate or used the way you think it is. It’s sorta like complaining that people mean figuratively when they say literally.
That’s because you keep looking in the wrong places like USCIS as opposed to say the department of Labor. You could also just google “skilled vs unskilled labor”.
Please see my earlier comment. I can’t find DOL definition for skilled vs unskilled at all, let alone one that matches yours.
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I did, thanks. I tried to look for something better or more authoritative than this. It describes skilled labor as laborers that are skilled. I don’t see anything about a self-descriptive title.
Skilled labor refers to highly trained, educated, or experienced segments of the workforce that can complete more complex mental or physical tasks on the job.
Unskilled labor is a workforce segment associated with a limited skill set or minimal economic value for the work performed. Unskilled labor is generally characterized by lower educational attainment, such as a high school diploma or lack thereof, typically resulting in smaller wages.
It clearly states that unskilled labor = low economic value and low wages. It then goes on to further stratify labor into “low-”, "mid-, and “semi-” skilled jobs with vague definitions. Delivery driver is semi skilled? For ubereats and UPS? At what level is a truck driver unskilled, skilled, or semiskilled?
Customer Service Representative is semi-skilled labor? Most of the few remaining jobs have been outsourced to literally anyone who can speak the language.
There definitely are jobs that are truly unskilled.
- Hauling bags of cement on a construction site
- Mucking out animal pens on a farm
- Digging ditches with a shovel
- Carrying and stacking firewood
These are jobs any able-bodied person can do without any training. Then you have very low skilled jobs such as being part of a moving crew for moving companies. For that one you need to be careful moving heavy and/or fragile objects without breaking them or damaging surroundings. But that’s really more about paying attention to what you’re doing than a skill you would receive training to do.
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Right but this argument is due to a conflict between economics jargon and everyday language. The people opposed to the term “unskilled labour” are unhappy about the negative connotations of the word “unskilled.”
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I disagree. This is a term which exists simultaneously in economics and in everyday speech. The everyday meaning has negative connotations whereas the economics term does not. People are responding to this conflict by trying to get economists to change their term in order to avoid the negative connotations.
I, personally, don’t agree with this approach to language in any case. Linguistic prescriptivism of this sort is authoritarian and highly susceptible to backlash. It’s vulnerable to the mistaken belief that if someone accedes to an authority’s demands, they now agree with the authority.
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Everyday speech in an economic context but not by economists. That’s the difference. Two surgeons discussing an appendectomy over lunch is different from two random people in a bar discussing an appendectomy.
They’re both using a term from a technical context but their understanding of the technical meaning of the term is different and the connotations are different.
The answer here being that unskilled labor is not derived from everyday language, and people who can’t conceive of that being the case are angry about it. And, by probability, are more likely to work jobs classified as “unskilled labor”. 🤷
Don’t worry. Republicans have a plan. Forcing births of unwanted children with no resources to house, feed, or educate them while relaxing child labor laws should fix that right up.
And shutting down the department of education
Right. You can learn everything you need to know on the farm or in the factory.
For a brief moment in 2020, they temporarily relabeled them as “essential workers”.
It just really meant they didn’t matter, and they were the fodder for the virus.
It meant their work is important enough to risk their lives for. “Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
How quickly we threw those COVID hero’s to the trash
in general we threw them in the trash as a parcel with calling them heroes. we gave them recognition of their value in lieu of due compensation
“You’re so great! Please keep working while I reap the rewards and sit on my ever-growing pile of money.”
Hero’s what?
Their to-the-trash, obviously! Can’t you read? Though I’ll admit I don’t know what a to the trash is.
The oldest jobs, which are the most important, are in some sense paid what they were when the job was created, so mothers are paid nothing, while farm workers, cooks, homemakers are paid next to nothing.
Traditionally, mothers are ‘paid’ in the sense that they receive the fruits of the family’s labour. So, if Daddy back in 2032 BC worked his arse off to get an iPhone, Mummy gets to play on it too. Or food or something idk
I feel like it should be called “primary” labor or something to that effect. “Skilled” labor that can’t function without “unskilled” labor to support it can be called “secondary” labor.
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Economists should take an English class then. Why use a word to describe a thing that doesn’t mean what the word means?
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We are complaining about the fact that the field of economics is a tool only of the rich. They exist to justify wealth and greed. You wrap it in jargon and chortle about it when you are allowed in the parlors of your betters. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it.
Words matter and your choice of words sucks.
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When you start really thinking about it, often unskilled jobs are nearly all the necessary jobs for humanity to survive. No one is going to suffer if your PhD army can no longer update twitter, I’m afraid to name the percentage, but most skilled jobs are useless in the sense that they’re not really making anything of value.
I think SEO jobs are good example of this.
I disagree. Without Frtiz Haber inventing nitrogen fertilizer there wouldn’t even be people to do unskilled labor.
This class battle has to stop. All economic fields are productive given that the market is valuing it. What’s not productive is corruption and hoarding and middle manager fiddling. We have science to determine all that so we don’t even need to gut feel this out.
Someone researching “transgender mice” can low key add more value than thousands or millions of “unskilled laborers”. We need to diversify and value all avenues of our collective production and growth because thats just a smart thing to do. Except for billionaires and hoarders which clearly are a net negative.
Putting skills in the right place does help. Your postdoc in agricultural sustainability will help all the “unskilled” agricultural labourers. Without you, they produce less in the long run. But without them, you get nothing at all.
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Me! I worked most of my life with 3D and Photoshop. Some stuff i did might have increased some sales, some might have been fun, but all were useless and mostly advertisement. I always wondered, if everyone working in ads died, what effect would it have on humanity? Rich people would be worse, but humanity as a whole would be better.
That’s just my field. I can think of quite a few areas that are just harmful and exists mostly to make rich richer.
Unskilled labour refers to those in the precarious and more easily replaced position of workers. It is used by labour advocates to identify those with a greater need for union representation.
It isn’t an insult. And the never-ending euphemism treadmill only serves to divide generations and make a handful of people feel important.
This knee-jerk reaction to the term “unskilled labour” reminds me of the one that replaced the term “ebonics” with “AAVE”, implying that the black men that came up with the term were offensive.
As I recall, it was renamed due to the conservative controversy created around Ebonics in education, specifically for testing materials, and AAVE was chosen to specifically link to the impact slavery had in the USA in the creation of it, addressing both the need to “market” the idea a different way to avoid the backlash caused by conservatives and provide a more accurate and impactful definition.
I believe the only ones who ever claimed it was derogatory were the ones fighting against its accepted use in formal testing.
But that’s just what I remember.
It’s wild that no one can look up how unskilled labor is actually defined.
Unskilled labor is kind of a misnomer. Perhaps the word should change to match what it is trying to say.
Or perhaps people should not expect that every turn of phrase is a colloquialism?
Why not?
Because nuanced discussion often requires context where colloquialisms typically don’t. You could absolutely say “jobs that require no specialized training at the outset”, but if you’re writing a paper or having a technical discussion in a labor field, that is really cumbersome. It’s easier to pick a context-appropriate one or two word solution. This is generally called a term of art.
It’s worth looking up “term of art” for a few more examples if my description didnt do it for you.
That’s no accident. A job is considered “unskilled” (or “unspecialized” as I like to call it) if any adult who’s gone through the education system and is reasonably healthy can do. Since society would collapse without these jobs, we want to do everything we can to make sure we always have people who can do them. How do you make that happen? By designing the education system to teach everyone the skills to do them and making it mandatory to complete your schooling. As a result, nearly everyone is capable of doing some of the most important jobs for our society.
Good point. But not just from planned education, I think. Most jobs can be done with a body and mind in moderate working order - our bodies and minds are amazing things! Picking fruit does not require a school education, nor does laying bricks require a gym routine. Though laying them straight needs training, reading instructions needs literacy and reporting results needs numeracy. Education helps.
