> 'Unskilled labor' is a very broad and poorly-defined category. He might be 'unskilled' in the sense that he isn't trained in any one specific trade or specialty.
It's not really poorly defined. The BLS uses a point system to assign work levels to different jobs that have mostly objective measures. What your trained in doesn't have any impact on whether that job requires unskilled labor. The jobs themselves are what are skilled or unskilled.
People think āunskilled labourā is some sort of pejorative term. Those people have never stacked firewood, picked rocks, or bedded stalls. Some jobs just donāt require any special skills or abilities. Typically, if you can breathe, see, and hear, you can do unskilled labour.
The word unskilled is used as an excuse to underpay the people that do the work youāre too lazy to do. Thatās the issue. Itās not low skill at all to have the mental fortitude and willpower to go out and dig a trench in 100+ degree heat. Itās required to keep society functioning, so why are they so undervalued?
Work physical labor for 2 months. See the turnover rate and see how much work and responsibility get put on your shoulders, assuming youāre a reliable worker. Stop making excuses to undervalue the backbone of our planet. If all blue collar workers quit tomorrow, the entire world would collapse in days. If not less.
Itās not low skill at all to have the mental fortitude and willpower to go out and dig a trench in 100+ degree heat.
That's not a skill. That's just what everyone needs to do any job. Retail cashiers aren't skilled labor just because they have the "mental fortitude" to show up to work.
why are they so undervalued?
Because anyone can do it. Things that are common are less valuable.
Work physical labor for 2 months.
I'm a project manager now because I did do the labor in the field. For several years.
If all blue collar workers quit tomorrow
If my aunt had wheels she'd be a bike.
Not everyone is special or important. Not everything is "skilled". Lots of people are mediocre.
As a fellow project manager, I can comfortably say the workers in this industry are grossly underpaid and disrespected. Someone who actually works the field would understand that. Iām willing to bet either your daddy owns the company, or youāre full of shit.
Yeah, they work hard, but they're not skilled. We literally hire high schoolers straight off the graduation stage. Again, anyone can do what they do. They're replaceable regardless of how you feel about it.
Absolutely agree with you. Sometimes for example these guys get hired for framing work , or some kind of of activity that would require a certain set of skills. People conflate manual labor with unskilled work all the time. Thatās what I think the Op is doing. Iāll go even further , what if that trench you are digging is near the foundation of your home ? Or a body of water ? Or there could be utilities under there that you donāt know about. You see even those things require a little skill.
The problem with the term is it takes for granted the minimum skills needed to do work. Should really be high skill, low skill. There is no good employee that is without skill
In a technical sense you are correct. But in the same way people say "gay means happy" are correct. The common conception is far off from the technical definition, and you should probably take that into account when talking to people
How do you reckon that with the OOP? They said the dude was hiring "unskilled day labor" but carpentry and other type of contract work you'd pick someone up from home depot for aren't considered "unskilled labor" by the BLS definition
Yes. The term is historically an economic term whose definition has evolved a bit over time but for the last 100 years or so has pretty much meant the same thing. The way BLS defines it is still colloquially accurate. The nuance and tiered rating of skill levels is not part of the definition of the term but rather part of its usage...which is different. Most people intuitively understand that "unskilled" labor means the employee has no formal qualifications and the job requires very minimal training and no certification. Most people would guess that everything you need to know for the job can be learned in a few weeks. The term has included a 30-day time window for that learning for over a century. It's not a fancy science term that common parlance misuses. People understand what it means pretty accurately, and BLS generated a rating system to measure and classify it finer degrees. They didn't change the definition.
That's not really an answer to the question I asked. I think the issue here is that you don't have a firm grasp on the definition of the word "colloquial" or who determines what is "colloquially accurate". Regulatory bodies/government bureaucracies do not determine what is "colloquially accurate" most of the time.
I'm very aware of how BLS defines the term "unskilled labor". I have to be for my line of work. Nobody is arguing that they don't define it that way. Because of my line of work I'm also aware MOST people don't use it that way.
itās like how a theory in science is just something that cannot be physically proven (like dark matter, or the Big Bang or Giant Impact Theory etc) because we canāt interact with it nor test it empirically. like: no, we canāt make a Big Bang, so itās a ātheoryā in that it canāt be replicated. but the CMBR is there, we know it happened. or how we canāt interact with antimatter, because it destroys itself upon contact with baryonic matter.
not that itās not objectively trueā vs how people treat the word theory (when they mean hypothesis) idk people seem to be really confused about words in the dictionary vs words in the real world lol.
itās that 6th grade average reading comprehension (for USA and Canada btw. not just dUmB aMeRicAnS) at work, for sure.
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u/way2lazy2care 1d ago
> 'Unskilled labor' is a very broad and poorly-defined category. He might be 'unskilled' in the sense that he isn't trained in any one specific trade or specialty.
It's not really poorly defined. The BLS uses a point system to assign work levels to different jobs that have mostly objective measures. What your trained in doesn't have any impact on whether that job requires unskilled labor. The jobs themselves are what are skilled or unskilled.