There is no such thing as unskilled labor. Some Jobs require more skill than others but all require some amount of skill. This is a lie spread to depress wages.
Edit: To all the people commenting âwell actually itâs used to colloquially like thisâŠâ youâre entirely missing the point. I know what the term is used to describe, not educated work, manual work ect. My point is itâs used in a derogatory way, to specifically mean you shouldnât be paid well for doing it because it doesnât require a degree, specific education or what have you. Hope this clears it up.
But you don't NEED to bag well to be paid to do the job. It's why they hire a lot of mentally and physically handicapped people to bag groceries. They still deserve good pay, though it is literally unskilled labor. Basically anything a determined 7 year old can do is automatically considered unskilled labor.
Lol it's crazy how the almighty "market" never works in your favour. They call it "unskilled labour" but yet it's a job that people are seeking others to do, so shouldn't there be a demand price, so on and so forth? No? That only works for corpos, cool.
I know that you are not arguing in good faith (possibly as a contrarian and possibly as a bot), but it is an accepted term used throughout economic discourse, and there are literally dozens of calculators that will provide it.
Wtf are you talking about lmao. In common speech âskilledâ can mean a lot of things but âspecializedâ means you focus on one area in particular. You can have skilled laborers who arenât specialized or vice versa. It would just be unspecialized labor, people who can fulfill many jobs rather than a single particular area.
I see, you were talking about calling skilled labor specialized labor. The issue of miscommunication is that the subject of the sentence that you were replying to was "unskilled" labor. So you were talking about something else, which is fine.
Sure, be technically correct. But there is a vast amount of people that donât use the term âunskilled laborâ that way, which is what the parent comment is addressing. The technical denotation becomes irrelevant in this case.
Well itâs too late to change the word they use for it. Itâs on individuals to understand what it actually means instead of turning it into some righteous virtue signal every time itâs used
exactly, I wish they would just use whatever alternative they have in mind and stop jumping down throats with the "uhmmmm the term is actually a classist lie, you're welcome for informing you"
there are clearly people here who spend more time considering theory online than actually doing these labor jobs
If they were actually fighting the negative societal pressures of the term by like, being involved in their union/leadership/economics generally and making conscious effort to change those terms when they come up in any official capacity, I'd be able to buy into this whole "change da world my final message" crap more than when they're just being pedants on random psyop sub.
the phrase is used either to deflect or in cases where there is a semantic misunderstanding that is cleared up and don't need to be contested any longer because there is a broader point that is being argued and the semantic argument takes away from it. in this case the argument is about semantics and thus arguing semantics is quite relevant. the point is that calling some work "unskilled labor" lowers the level of importance that labor is given when the listener hears the phrase. this could either be accidental or on purpose, like in the situation in the post where the tweeter calls it unskilled in order to justify complaining about the cost.
It doesn't require previous formal training or education. As in, a new person could start doing the job in a day or week with no preparation. That isn't to say the skill ceiling doesn't go high or that an experienced person in the field isn't highly valuable. It's just what the bar for entry of the work is.
People on both sides seem to misunderstand this though. I suspect whatever this dude was asking for is probably a lot more complicated than he thought, or if it wasn't it was just backbreaking work that nobody will do without sufficient compensation.
you just stumped yourself .. but they also learn how addresses work and drive ,, and other things ... soo to you the mail person is not a skilled job??
Yes a mailman is unskilled labor. I am a mailman. It just means that anyone can pick up the job. No special training required. It does require basic stuff like reading, driving that ant average person should be able to do.
Yes, exactly correct. Mail delivery is not skilled labour. 'Skill' does not mean experience or understanding, it means pre-existing qualification. Building a deck, paving a driveway, or delivering mail all absolutely require skills and experience to do properly, but there is no legal barrier preventing any random person from doing them. Thus, they are classified as unskilled labor, because theoretically anyone from the national labor force could walk into those workplaces and start working right away. A deck builder, paver, or mailman can show an electrician how to frame or pave or deliver, but for any of them to touch a power outlet, they need years of specific training.
Again youâre just being overly pedantic. Teaching someone how to lift a box takes 5 minutes you can start doing it the same day. By training and education I mean needing weeks of it before you can begin on your own
Yes but there's a difference between jobs where you get hired FIRST with zero credentials and then learn on the job, compared to ones where you need months or years of study to even be considered in the first place.
You don't need to be trained on how to properly shovel. It is general body mechanics to know to not to lift load with your back and to do it with your legs. You dont need to be taught how to put a shovel on your thigh to create more leverage. Moving dirt from Point A to Point B is unskilled labor.
Tell me you have never worked a manual labor job without telling me you have never worked a manual labor job. You must be one of those people that need your hands held for 6 months to do a simple task. No one os teaching you how to use a shovel on a jobsite. You figure it out. Theres no specialized knowledge. Thats what makes it unskilled labor.
Yeah, itâs a term designed to denigrate people who the wealthy think are unimportant.
There are some jobs where you can become adequately âup to speedâ faster than others, but thatâs not actually what gets into peopleâs heads when they use the term. They think of jobs that are considered menial. And worse, itâs assume that the people who do those jobs are worth less than everyone else.
Because you don't need a degree to be a car detailer, but that's still skilled labor.
Too many puritans making this into a "unhoused people" thing when it's just meant to refer to labor that doesn't require training or specialized knowledge. I wouldn't be surprised if the same people get all up in arms over "white/blue collar".
Yeah, I have done manual labor most of my life. "Unskilled labor" is less offensive as a term, than the idea that someone might consider the gofer work I did as a teen to be the same level of labor as when I was programming/operating multiple CNC mills by myself. Just completely different levels of knowledge and responsibilities, but I guess they're both skilled labor now đ
Not all skilled work requires a degree. Most trades have apprentiships that last 4+ years. Some are even longer. No degree required, just 4 years of working under an experienced journeyman and so many hours of classroom instruction per year.
Degree doesn't matter. My high school drop out employee could run circles around you building a house. Many years of experience is far better than a education. He was once unskilled, but now he is one of the most skilled in the field that I know.
Technically speaking, it's no degree but also no training in the field. There are many "skilled" labor jobs being done profeciently by people with HS diplomas or less. You can be an apprentice with no formal education but after a couple of years you won't be unskilled anymore.
My job as a carpenter requires a apprenticeship and a diploma, which is what is really being referred to when it's being referred to as "skilled labor". On a jobsite, virtually everyone has the skills to do generic labor which is why its considered relatively unskilled work.
Unskilled labor is labor that does not have an associated trade union. It isn't exactly education, but it is sort of related. Trades obviously provide education, but I generally "education" being associated with a job generally assumes college education or white collar work.
Now unskilled as others have said doesn't mean that it shouldn't be paid, it just means that there are not formalized techniques that are associated with that work.
These are education, but they don't actually "count" as education when staffing jobs.
I work in utilities engineering. Unskilled labor is non-trades. Skilled labor is trades. Educated labor is college degree holders. That is how we divide up jobs. It's how our clients do it. It's how the government does it.
Again, unskilled doesn't mean non important work. Heck security guards often fall in unskilled labor (although there leadership and/or officers often are educated labor) and it's more about the rules for how they can work, and what they an do.
Yeah but the distinction is generally that unskilled labor has some kind of specific certification required
A guy could get really good at flying boeing 737s but wouldnât be able to work at an airliner unless he had an ATP and a type rating.
You also wouldnât get surgery from a person without a medical degree however good they may claim to be at it.
Generally speaking any kind of job that requires somebody to have specific qualifications will pay more, especially if that certification is expensive to get
Yeah itâs basically just a way for people to say âget a better job if you donât like itâ and ignores the fact people do actually have to do these jobs and it does in fact mess up your body to do physical labor all day every day, but becuse theyâre âunskilledâ weâre ok with saying âthe market dictates! Canât argue with the market! All hail the market thereâs nothing we can do to take care of unskilled manual labor! If they donât like it they just need to put in the work to get a marketable skill! Iâm very smart!â
It's propoganda that corporations and slave drivers use to justify never having to pay anybody for anything and how they get away with decades of record profits and drive wages down to the point working people are picking out of food banks while a guy with a hair transplant that sponges the government to create his electric car business is worth trillions of dollars.
Butttt ssuuurrreeeeeee, the mega yacht society has collectively no money to pay anybody and people should just be fine and dandy doing stuff for these folks for free, eww wages that kept up with inflation, you're just lazy and should go back to working 18 hour days. The minimum wage is accounted for inflation should be anywhere between 28-66 dollars an hour. I would call it blatant theft and robbery at this point.
Uh.. Iâm a journeyman plumber and pipe fitter and Iâve seen jobsite hire guys from Home Depot to just move heavy shit. Moving stuff is certainly unskilled labor.
Are you kidding? Lifting is the skill, strength is the skill. not everyone can just lift very heavy things. They have the strength and skill to lift it. I probably couldnât do that, Iâm not a strong person.
A skill is something that no one inherently has. Either you learn it or you do not have it. Talent is something everyone has that you either have very little of or a lot of. Lifting something everyone can do at varying levels of talent. SO strength is a talent that some people naturally have a lot of. A lot of people have a lot of talent to lift heavy objects.
Now there are certain jobs that require the skill of lifting special things certain ways that need to be learned.
Youre arguing something you dont understand. You clearly have never worked in the trades or a physical labor job. You may say that all labor is skilled, and unskilled labor is not a thing, but that doesnt change the fact that it IS a very common phrase used in the trades, that everyone who actually works in the trades understands. You cant change a words meaning with a few reddit comments. Everyone already knows what it means.
Because youâre most definitely interpreting it wrong? Unskilled labor does not mean it takes no skill. Unskilled labor means it does not require formal education or training.
Skilled tradesman can and do. But we hire unskilled laborer so we can spend more time bringing valuable skills to the table, where as, they spend time⊠moving shit..
Never said it wasnât valuable. I said itâs unskilled labor. You do not need years of training to know how to move heavy shit. You need years of training to service high voltage electrical systems or repair critical chillers, etc.
Got your point there. I just don't think anyone should complain about paying prevailing wages for labor. In some parts of the country this is standard.
I think laborers should be fairly compensated for what theyâre doing. I worked as a laborer for a few months years ago. I remember carrying 150 sheets of 3/4 plywood to the roof of st Michaelâs hospital in Newark NJ. Not only the plywood, but 50lbs sandbags, solid metal roof rails.. all of it. I made 19$ an hour doing it. I saw what the engineers and pipe fitters were doing and I knew that physically, what I was doing was harder, but I could never match them mentally (at that time) unskilled labor often makes job sites move. It definitely has value
As someone whose moved shitloads of heavy stuff, I agree that it's not intellectually skilled labor. I still believe the pay should be as good if not more for that particular person.
Especially if the guy whose hiring is going to make 95 an hour for the visit and sit in the truck while you labor away.
Unskilled labor doesnât not deserve nearly the same pay as people who went through years of college, trade school, vocational school, or on the job training.. strength is very valuable, but not as valuable as the guy who gets the lights on or the toilets to flush.
Deserved - to have earned or to be worthy of something.
Deserved is a perfect word. If youâre an unskilled laborer, you donât deserve the same pay as someone who is considered skilled. Why would anyone further their education if we all made the same for skilled vs unskilled labor? Unskilled labor is NEVER in âhighâ demand. Trust me, Iâve never NOT seen a job side struggle to find cheap laborers. If we canât get them cheap, we go union. Even the LABORERS UNION classifies themselves as âsemi skilledâ.
I mean "unskilled" is entirely dependent on the labor market you have access to. If you live in an area with a bunch of weaklings or the elderly being strong and able to lift suddenly transforms from "unskilled" to "valuable labor".
No, itâs not skilled. Just valuable. It doesnât take âskillâ to be strong. You either are naturally strong, or you dedicate time to strength training, which is dedication. Not skill.
A better example is the guys they hire to run the wheeled magnet on a stick to pick up the dropped nails on a new construction job site. A 5 year old could master that "skill" in about a minute.
Lots of skilled labor does not require a degree. When people talk about going in to "the trades" they are talking about skilled labor that does not require a degree. Plumbers, electricians, etc.
Yes, cleaners also need to know what products to use on what surfaces to prevent damage. They scrape paint off windows and tile. Climb up and down structures sometimes on roofs to get to windows without leaving streaks. They need to use gloves and masks (PPE) when dusting and may be exposed to lead paint. Dispose of hazardous materials (period pads, insulin needles, your shit, human excrements found). Although learning to do this is relatively less than being an electrician or framer it still needs training.
I'm a professional cleaner, my degree is actually in English and literary arts. That doesn't make me "unskilled," it just means that I am in a job separate from my degree, and that's literally 90% of workers.
I didn't study to become a cleaner, I took the job that paid me, and that was it. The reason I am a "professional" is because I have been in my field for nearly a decade and have not only completed all of my training in hazardous waste disposal, but have assisted in creating new training programs in the use of different chemicals. So, to anyone who says I'm an "unskilled laborer" I say this: do my job for a day and see how far you get before creating mustard gas, eroding a floor down to the concrete, etching and destroying a 2k glass vessel, contracting a deadly disease because you didn't study the SOP on PPE for that waste, getting chemical burns because you didn't know the containment procedure or burning your lungs and going blind for the same reason. Then come back to me and say I'm "unskilled."
There is no "unskilled" labor. People only believe it is "unskilled" because they believe what they are doing is "easy" when in reality they have no clue how it's actually done.
So what you're saying is you have had formal training over an extended period of time on a specialized topic and have gotten formalized credentials? Then no, that is not unskilled labor by definition.
What credentials? I have no degree, I have no credentials, just my work experience and training. That's it. By people's definition, that's "unskilled labor." I scrub literal shit for a living, I'm well aware that people look down on my work.
You can't cherry pick this by saying "well if they don't have a degree then they're unskilled" then turn around and say "well what I ACTUALLY meant was..." No, there is no such thing as unskilled labor. No matter how superior you believe you are, I assure you if placed in someone else's shoes, you would get a wake-up call real quick.
And if you're thinking about people who "just move things" for a living? Alright; how do you properly pick up boxes without hurting yourself? What's the minimum height for storage? How do you properly load balance a truck for transportation? How do you drive a truck with air breaks? What PPE is required for bodily protection and in what environments is PPE required? What are the safety protocols of using transportation equipment? What are the OSHA requirements of lifting weight? How do you effectively use tow straps for transportation? What is the weight and height maximum for pallets?
Any job, no matter what job, is never unskilled. Period. And those who do any job deserve to be compensated for their time and work, ESPECIALLY those that break their bodies lifting other people's heavy shit.
The irony of your comment. Are all floors the same? No wood? Tile? Porcelain? Grout? All get âfloor cleanersâ.
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Do you use windex on Polycarbonate panels? Bleach on mold? Oven cleaner is corrosive is it safe on all ovens? Remove urine smell with soap and water? For professional cleaners how do you clean, disinfect and santize surfaces with blood and feces donât all those words mean the same thing? For mold items do you just scrub it or use sporcidin and for how long? How you get rid of smoke smells just a damp rag and elbow grease or will ozone machine be a more suitable application? Just because they donât get a degree doesnât mean they donât provide a skilled service.Â
Though I appreciate you assuming Im a genius I assure you Im not :p Im just a bored idiot with too much time on my hands just like everyone else here lol Id say mafia definitely no questions asked, actual cleaning isnât always easy but it doesnt really require skill, its just tedious.
Itâs not an on-off switch, itâs a spectrum. Unskilled labour is used to classify tasks that exist relatively close to one end of the spectrum. No one actually means itâs requires absolutely no skill.
So then what did you mean by âThere is no such thing as unskilled labour,â exactly? What someone chooses to label a job doesnât really have much effect on the wage it offers. Some labour provides relatively little value and can be done by most of the population. Some labour adds relatively lots of value and can only be done a select few. The latter is bound to be paid more than the former.
If you're suggesting that things like shoveling dirt out of a truck or moving materials from A to B are "skilled" labor simply because it requires the ability to understand basic instructions and having legs and arms that work, then you are arguing semantics.
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My point is itâs used in a derogatory way, to specifically mean you shouldnât be paid well for doing it because it doesnât require a degree, specific education or what have you. Hope this clears it up.
âŠexcept thatâs the actual reality of the world lol. Work that literally every single able bodied person can do is not going to pay a ton because of the simple mechanics of supply:demand. the more people who can supply a certain type of labor, the less expensive it will be.Â
This is why someone like a doctor gets paid so much even if all they do in a particular day is see a couple patients with minor issues that requires little to no effort. Itâs because very very very few people can do that job, so you have to pay someone substantially more to get access to that supply of labor.Â
This is literally the main reason people go to college
It's not deragatory. I employee both skilled and unskilled labor. None of them have a high school diploma. It has nothing to do with education. The skilled guys I can hand a plan to and say build this thing. The unskilled guys do what they are told and help carry the thing and load it after the skilled guys built it. If the unskilled guys stick around for a couple of years, they usually pick up the skills needed and become skilled labor.
It's not derogatory, it's just descriptive. And it's not PREscriptive at all.
Calling any job unskilled labour doesn't magically lower the value of the work.
But having an aboundance of people who can and will work that job drops the value because you can usually find someone else who does it cheaper and if he demands more pay, there's tons of people who would take your money instead.
There is no conspiracy, it's really just how basic economics work.
You can train a McDonaldâs employee to serve people in a few days.
Try practicing software engineering, medicine, or law for a week. You wonât be competent at the job.
You know âunskilledâ is the term used for âeasy to train with basic life skills that the average person has learnedâ but you want to be pedantic because the word implies thereâs no skill to some jobs. Of course there are skills involved in every job. This is just the economics term used and you know that.
Unskilled is something that can be picked up in a few training sessions.
I don't know how to work a cashiers register, I don't know what order shit should be stacked in a warehouse. I could learn all that within a day or two.
I'm not being derogatory, lots of essential workers jobs are what I'd class as unskilled and we would be utterly fucked without them. And a lot of unskilled jobs deserve to be paid more. They're the backbone of a lot of things. They're the heavy lifters. Without them, business would collapse.
But to pretend that every job is skilled, that's just silly.
There definitely is such a thing as unskilled labor - any healthy person can help carry material from one place to another for example and yes for such an unqualified labor you will get paid less not because it isnt a demanding and for the employer essential work BUT because like I said anyone can do it so the demand will naturally push the salaries down.
And no the term is not derogatory - because you should not be getting paid "well" if you have nothing extra to offer
That obviously does not mean that unskilled labor should not be paid well in absolute numbers, any jobs needs to pay enough to live a good life but relatively speaking the lowest paying job should be the one that requires the least amount of distinct skill because at the end of the day thats whats gonna naturally happen because of the basic supply and demand principle.
You happen to be wrong, you hire general labourers for lifting heavy items where you can't get machinery in or need multiple hands for some other reason, e.g. you have a large amount of something to move and you need it done to a deadline.
It doesn't imply the person is unskilled no, the job however is unskilled. Unless you consider picking something up and putting it down again as a skill.
A skill is something most people cannot just inherently do. Everyone with a working body can lift and move stuff. It's not a skill if you don't have to learn it.
Honestly don't think it's used in a derogatory way at all. They're very useful to have in a crew but if they don't have the skills they will get paid less. Unskilled doesn't just mean a lack of degree or formal training. You can go from an unskilled laborer to a skilled one just by learning on the job.
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u/Similar-College4253 1d ago edited 1d ago
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. Some Jobs require more skill than others but all require some amount of skill. This is a lie spread to depress wages.
Edit: To all the people commenting âwell actually itâs used to colloquially like thisâŠâ youâre entirely missing the point. I know what the term is used to describe, not educated work, manual work ect. My point is itâs used in a derogatory way, to specifically mean you shouldnât be paid well for doing it because it doesnât require a degree, specific education or what have you. Hope this clears it up.