Anyone who has worked “unskilled” positions can tell you that every job has a learning curve and experience counts for a lot.
This is particularly true in jobs that require a degree of physical endurance and manual dexterity. Picking a vegetable is easy. Picking a thousand vegetables an hour (without bruising the produce or ruining the plant) for eight hours a day is quite difficult. And skilled workers are far more lucrative to the farm owner than clumsy neophytes.
What often defines a service worker as “unskilled” isn’t the work, but the degree to which automated capital and real estate ownership are integrated into the workflow. The more leverage the employer can exert over the hiring market, the more easily they classify labor as “unskilled”’ and downgrade the pay.
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.
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.
Nicole when she is not catfishing Lemmy users.
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.
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.
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 ;).
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.
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.
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.
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”
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. But there is a difference between labor used to develop and labor used to perform.
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.
It’s only really a measure of how easy you are to replace.
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
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.”
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.)
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.
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…
Billionaires don’t actually work. The higher up the work chain the more you get paid, and the less you do.
That’s the dream they force onto us, go up in the ladder to work less, but then you have to crush the ones below you on your way up otherwise it does not work
Damn. We should all quit our jobs and become billionaires!
