this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Madison420@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 58 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 61 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 10 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] ColdSideOfYourPillow@piefed.social 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (12 children)

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.

[–] HeurtisticAlgorithm9@feddit.uk 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] stray@pawb.social 6 points 1 day ago

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.

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[–] Sl00k@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 96 points 1 day ago (2 children)

it's also far less unskilled than people assign credit for. all work is knowledge work

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 38 points 1 day ago

It's only really a measure of how easy you are to replace.

[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 17 points 1 day ago

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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[–] huppakee@lemm.ee 48 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I vote we call them 'core contributors' from now on.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

ah yes, you helped save society from collapse. Here’s a gold star and a rent increase. Thank you!

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[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's wild that no one can look up how unskilled labor is actually defined.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Unskilled labor is kind of a misnomer. Perhaps the word should change to match what it is trying to say.

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[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

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."

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

How quickly we threw those COVID hero's to the trash

[–] match@pawb.social 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago

"You're so great! Please keep working while I reap the rewards and sit on my ever-growing pile of money."

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[–] dudinax@programming.dev 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

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

[–] RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago (10 children)

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.

Unskilled labor jobs are not jobs that lack skills rather they are the roles whose titles do not imply specific skills, tasks or educations. Im a wine importer what does. that tell you about what I know or can do? Can you tell my skill at say driving a forklift from that title?

Unskilled labor doesn’t mean you have no skills

[–] Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago (7 children)

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.

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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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[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (27 children)

Which is exactly the point of the post: there is no such thing as unskilled labour. This label must die

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[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And shutting down the department of education

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Right. You can learn everything you need to know on the farm or in the factory.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

There is no such thing as unskilled labor. But there is a difference between labor used to develop and labor used to perform.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago

Nicole when she is not catfishing Lemmy users.

[–] Gowron_Howard@lemm.ee 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Billionaires don’t actually work. The higher up the work chain the more you get paid, and the less you do.

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[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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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[–] yucandu@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I feel like that’s actually pretty logical. “Skilled labor” involves skills that not everyone must have. The things that (nearly) everyone needs to be at least okay at are the things that come up in people’s lives most frequently (things like basic cleaning, socializing, and administrative/organization tasks). Without people to do the things that come up most often, society is going to fall apart.

I’m split on the name though. I understand what it means and don’t take offense (I currently work at a bakery, but I’ve also been a waitress and worked in a call center, all unskilled jobs- I’ve also worked in litigation management for an insurance company and I currently teach German classes too, which are skilled jobs, fwiw), but I get how it rubs some people the wrong way.

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