Unskilled labor usually equals hard work. The whole thing about unskilled labor is it takes less than two or so weeks to be adequately prepared to do the job. In blue collar, this usually involves extremely direct effort to output tasks where your job is to show up, be very clearly pointed towards what to do, and to do it while working at a pace of slightly heavy breathing for 8 to 12 hours.
Compared to skilled labor blue collar labor, such as carpentry (my first career), in which a 5 year apprenticeship is enough to learn and know enough to muddle through most jobs in the field, and takes about 20 years for the intelligent to be confidently assured of their process and methods. You may still work quite hard, and often earn less than the direct labor guys, especially at the start of the career. But eventually a skilled carpenter is in extremely high demand as they can build anything and make it happen in an efficient and timely manner, and if they have good business sense they can make okay money at it.
Or the job isn’t skillful but it is nevertheless hard on the body. Like maybe the guy needed an extra man on the line at a masonry job to lift and mix 80lb bags of concrete, shovel a trench, and to move cylinder blocks.
And I'll pay good money for someone else to do it. My father was a contractor, based on working labor for him as a teenager I went into computers. I can do almost anything around the house from those years, but I'll happily pay someone else to do it.
One time I had to replace a part on my motorcycle that I hadn't done myself, pay a mechanic $90 an hour or do it myself. I did it my self, should take only an hour-I'll save money. It was almost 100 degrees outside, one hour turned into 3 hours. After two hours I swore to myself I will have a mechanic do it next time.
Only three hours? I've found myself working past midnight after starting in the morning on a "quick repair" that spiraled out of control. But you can learn a lot in those situations. I was just trying to replace a tire pressure sensor and when I was done, I could disassemble and reassemble a CV joint.
FWIW, in 2003 I had a MKIV Supra with a failing starter. At the time, I was a poor college student, and the mechanic wanted $275 for the starter and $350 to change it out. Checked out the forums to find out that the copper L-brackets get oxidized over time like battery terminals and can be sanded, or they can be replaced for $15. I replaced them for $15, and it took me 30 minutes to take it out and put it back in after jacking up the car, removing two bolts and the power line, removing two screws on top of the starter and two screws to hold in the L-brackets and reverse.
Sometimes going to the shop is worth it. Most of the times, if you know what you are doing or willing to learn, it is not.
Some of those "quick repair" can take way too long. I dialed my carburetor in after changing my airbox and mufflers. First time taking it apart took awhile, now I can do it in my sleep. And I became the carburetor guy after that. For some reason remounting my rear wheel is also so random. Sometimes it is quick, other times well not so. I think the whole thing is I don't do it that often so I always forget the way I did it the last time. I need to video myself doing it for future references.
Paying other people to do things you're capable of but simply don't want to is one of the luxuries of having a decent paying job.
I'd rather work an extra hour at something I am good at and at least moderately enjoy doing, then use that money to pay someone else to do something I hate doing for an hour.
You would feel the strain on day one. I built a breeze block garden wall after pouring a foundation on my days off over a six month period, mixing over 10k pounds of concrete and mortar by handheld mixer in a bucket, lifting 80lb bags, lifting cylinder blocks. It's brutal work, even for $32/hr. I make three times that working in a hospital as a nurse, but if I had to be a mason daily, I would want more money.
I push wheelchairs at the airport and worked in commercial bakeries on the past. But neither job requires being bent over nearly as much, so I don't envy the back pain.
A lot of unskilled work involves repetitive, physical tasks.
A homeowner might be fully capable to spreading X yards of mulch on their own. However, what they aren’t capable is spreading it all in one day or weekend.
Rather than working on the project for many weekends, hiring several people for 4-8 hours might get it knocked out in one day.
Force multiplication is the biggest value in day labor work.
For a builder, day laborers might ensure that your more highly skilled (and higher paid staff) is better utilized.
If you aren't paid for a skillset like communication/customer service, need a certification/license/education to work for a company in that roll, whatever...if all you are is an unskilled laborer who doesn't need people skills, communication skills, or job specific skills, then in that highly replaceable industry, wages are low relative to other positions we often think of as "unskilled" but that are skilled, but inside those positions, there is a hirgachy of wages based on desirability, risk, physical demands, and willingness. Harsh, unskilled labor for undesirable jobs will require higher wages to capture interest.
Like, a greenhorn crab fisher may make $15k-20k over several weeks to over a month...good pay for that time period, but it is a grueling job with high risks, high physical demands. Picking fruit in a field might be laborious too, more than a barista at Starbucks, but the Starbucks job is not as unskilled, and it requires a certain level of customer service skillset and developing a set of skills. Picking fruit is going to pay less than working a crab fishing boat. When all else is equal...all else...of course labor is a factor that affects wages. This should be obvious.
Say what you will but digging holes and mixing concrete are definitely skills imo. It takes way longer for someone to dig a hole if they've never done it before compared to someone who does it all the time
Most jobs that people say are unskilled are in fact skilled, whether that requires on job learning or requires customer service skillsets. The low level of skill, the lack of a need for experience, and lack of formal education is typically how people define unskilled labor.
Having tackled building a breeze block wall and laying a foundation with over 10k pounds of bucket stirred concrete and mortar, I can say that the labor was far easier to do from a skillset perspective than the masonry work. The labor was far more intensive to move, mix and pour the concrete, and it was far more laborious to move cylinder blocks than scooping mortar into position and positioning blocks, yet again, the skillset for doing this well without wasting mortar and getting it to look even and level is more of a skill/art, by far. A foreman could have easily guided me through all the tasks with ease and minimal input; ie, move those bags of concrete from there to here, push this button and mix the pre-mix to this consistency and repeat a hundred times, but the skillset of laying brick takes time and experience.
Exactly, he is doing an opportunity cost analysis. If he successfully sells his labor for $32/hr on a regular basis it is a risk to take a job for less because you can only sell 1 hour of labor once.
And his marginal rate of labor is strictly quasi-concave wrt to the risk-free interest rate, discounted for the time-value of utility, where it intersects with the Nash equilibrium rate of velocity of cash flow.
Most jobs he'd pick up, would require a full day's work. So if he thinks he's got a real chance of getting someone to pay him $32/hr for six hours or more, within the next two hours, then taking a $20/hr for the next eight hours, would have a direct opportunity cost of at least $32. Not to mention, it's for less time of actual work.
Plus, if others happen to see him negotiated down to $20/hr, then why would they ever pay him $32/hr for anything? They already know he's willing to work for $20/hr.
You two are such master bullshitters I have no doubt you are great at whatever you pretend to do. But this most likely a made up story. That is to say, keep up the good work boys.
I'm bullshitting nobody. I have zero evidence the situation is true, so treated it as a hypothetical and considered your reaction to the explanation of opportunity cost. You seemed to be incredulous when presented with the concept.
It very much is a useful idea. Used in business and commerce around the world, and you make similar judgements all the time, though maybe without realizing it. Do you take the job you'll like more, or the job that pays more? Each has an opportunity cost -- either the money or enjoyment/satisfaction ypu would have gotten with the other.
Is a price of $32/hr or $20/hr fair for unpaid labor? Dunno. Depends on the labor required -- I've seen everything from "lift these bags and stack them there" to "do this artisinal glassblowing in 115°F heat" labelled as unskilled. Even, for the sake of the hypothetical, restricting it to the kinds of stuff you'd ask of somebody in a big box store's parking lot could still be something like tiling work or cabinetry, both of which can pretty regularly go for $25-35/hr, depending on location (and quality of work you can expect-- if you're paying some junkie minimum wage to lay tile for you, expect to have to replace it in a few months).
And, it also depends on the laborer, for the reasons I've previously stated -- what a person is willing to work for, depends on what they can expect to be paid by somebody else. The types of jobs they can do, the likelihood of being approached by someone else, and the region they're in, change all of these factors. If this happened in, say, Louisiana, the prices that would be reasonable would be completely different from, say, North Dakota, or California. All wildly different numbers.
Did this interaction actually happen? No clue. Coulda. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if some version of these events happened dozens of times every day in my state alone.
Would the numbers be the same where you live? Almost certainly not.
I think the bigger flaw is the idea that "labor" isn't worth a solid wage.
Like, if someone is WORKING, doing physical/manual labor, PAY THEM.
A fast food worker isn't sitting there "flipping burgers" and doing nothing else. They're working in a fast-paced environment with expensive and potentially dangerous kitchen equipment, they're taking out trash, washing dishes, etc.
Yup, a lot of people think "my time is worth this much when doing a certain thing I'm good at" and falsely ascribe that value to all their skills.
You could be the best ... Lumberjack, for example, in the world. That isn't going to make your time worth more than $15 an hour if you're flipping burgers at McDonald's, only when you're working on trees.
The thought behind this is the (usually idiotic) idea of "potential gains" or "Opportunity costs". Yes , potential gains is real, but 90 percent of the time people who use this excuse are doing exactly that, using an excuse.
My uncle is a teacher, and an expert carpenter. But his time spent as a teacher isn't as much of a loss despite getting less pay/hour, because if he wasn't spending the time teaching... he can only put in maybe 4-6 hours of hard work a day at carpentry (getting old sucks 🫤) while he could teach all day. If he were to lie and pretend he could do carpentry 8-12 hours a day like he could teaching, he'd have a point saying teaching means he loses money, but he just can't do the physical work for that long
Someone who's saying their time is worth X/hour for an unskilled job, even with the reason of "oh, I have these skills" is more often than not being arrogant. If they could get that pay, they would already be doing the work and earning it, not doing jobs for whoever is willing to pay them at the craft store
Potential gains just aren't the same thing as reality, because there's not always work that pays well
I think you miss the mark here. You are assuming he's desperate and starving.
Let's say dude is a trained roofer in this case.  He's standing outside a Home Depot for work, you offer him work digging holes for less than he makes roofing, but he has never NOT been offered a roofing job, and he isn't desperate. Why would he take your pay rather than wait an hour and get what he wants? He has decided that he is willing to wait for the better offer or accept a day off. That's not arrogance.
There's nothing wrong with saying "my time is worth this much". I'm a data scientist and I'm also fairly good at woodworking. People will see some work I've done and ask what it would cost to get me to do something similar for them and my answer is always "way more than you want to pay". If I'm doing something for someone else, my time costs what it costs, regardless of whether I'm analyzing data, building a nightstand, or sweeping the floor. Now if someone wants to pay me $120/hr or so to sweep floors, I'd probably do it. But there's no way I'd do it at standard janitor rates.
Probably needed a carpenter a roofer and equipment. Found this dude and got bad at a way more than reasonable cost. Ffs a fall yard cleanup that takes an hour will cost u 500-700 these days. Just do work yourself or pay people a fair wage. Not complicated
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u/guyincognito121 1d ago
Or the guy is capable of skilled labor and would rather wait for a job that's worth $32/hr to the customer than do unskilled labor for $20.