There is no such thing as "unskilled labor"

Except it's literally just an economics term referring to positions that can be reasonably learned through on the job training with little or no prior experience.

Stuff like this just muddies and distracts the conversation from the true issue, which is that those jobs deserve a living wage.

Yeah I don’t care if the jobs are literally no skill, that shouldn’t matter when it comes to paying a living wage.
- Also, unskilled jobs still end up generating experienced laborers who are worth being compensated for that experience.
- The only thing that matters is how many hours it takes up in a persons day.
Well don't you think we should fix misnomers? Also, "it's an official term" is a poor excuse. Terms change and evolve all of the time.
Tons of jobs can be taught with on the job training with little to no experience. There's a reason unskilled labor typically refers to food service and blue collar work, while white collar jobs are typically considered entry level.
We can fix two things by the way. Complaining about multiple issues under a larger umbrella doesn't "muddy the water."
- For the record, I don't totally disagree with you, but don't you think capitalists at the top would rather people spend their energy arguing about the economic terminology rather than fighting for workers rights?
  They would happily call it just about anything if it meant not paying workers more.
- Which alternative term do you propose?
You've literally just described every job that exists everywhere. It's a bullshit term to other and denigrate certain groups.
- A lot of jobs can't be learnt on the fly. They either need prior training, or significant on the job or prior to work training. Those jobs will, by their nature earn a premium (basic supply and demand).
  There will always be low skill jobs, and that's ok. The issue is that they are now so poorly paid that you can't survive on them.
  E.g. an office janitor is an unskilled job. It's easy to get a new person up to speed on-the-fly. A janitor on a medical ward is low skilled. They require more training, but it can be on the job. Cleaning a surgery theatre is a skilled job. It requires a significant baseline of knowledge to do it right. This requires off the job training.
  None are bad jobs, and all should be paid well enough to live on. However, the more specialist roles should also earn more, since they have higher requirements.
- I’ll keep my surgeons having gone to med school tyvm
people definitely use it in a derogatory way though

"How much am I getting paid?"
"It's unskilled labour, so not much."
"Then I'll do something else that pays more."
"But then this won't get done!"
"You can do it yourself."
"I'm too important for this!"
"So the work is not important?"
"It's very important, it needs to be done or we'll be in shit up to our necks!"
"So pay me as much as this is important."
"I won't, it's just unskilled labour. WHY DOES NOBODY WANT TO WORK ANYMORE?"

a tale as old as time itself.

This is why they're legalizing child labor.
If we're taking about making the till scanner in the shop go beep, yeah, that doesn't take extensive training and can be done by the next hungover 16 year old who stumbles in off the street. I've been that 16 year old, it was great.
This image is daft, assuming the other trades are unskilled. They're undesirable, sure, but you can't do them with 15 mins of training and another hungover moron in the back office "supervising".

If you honestly think you can man the cash register at McDonald's competently with the same level and scope of training required to say design an RF frontend for cell signals or maybe remove someone's Appendix, then you're insane or lying to yourself.

"Unskilled" or now "low skilled" is a defined term. It doesn't mean a goldfish can do it, and it doesn't mean it isn't important. It means that any reasonable human with a modicum of training can do the job well enough to produce valued output.

At my service jobs, I'd usually get an hour or two of training per area, and be watched for a few days or a week. Then let loose and that's it. The guys I know that design those RF frontends not only have 4-8 years of physics and math intensive academia, but then work under senior designers for 10+ years learning and designing before leading their own project.

If you swap the Goodburger employee with the RF Designer, the designer will learn to sling burgers. The burger dude will accomplish nothing of value and probably be a net negative.

Nobody is saying anything of importance or requirement or paying wages. Taking a defined term and weaponizing it for a side cause makes anyone that knows what it actually means, roll their eyes and ignore the message you're trying to convey. And in this case, it's mostly unskilled workers trying to sound important to highly skilled workers. This means your intended audience is tuning the message out.

Take an RF designer and have them man the till at McDonald's with the day or two of training that most of these places do. See how they fare. I'm an EMT. Peoples lives literally depend on my skills. I was a roofer and a taco bell manager before that. I struggled more and was far more stressed at taco bell and I'd rather die than go back to working fast food.
People aren't weaponizing the term. They're already weaponized against the working class. The meme is calling that out. Just because that term has a specific definition doesn't mean that's how it's used in the broader public. Years of propaganda went into cultivating a certain image and association with that term. You hopping in and saying "that's not what that means!!!1!!" isn't going to change that.
The only people that give a shit about your definition are economists and even they aren't immune to the propaganda that's proliferated since before they were kids to foster a negative stereotype around that term. Instead of being a contrarian butthole, why don't you take the time to understand class struggle? You're not helping anyone or anything with this inane bullshit
- Not wanting to do something because you have better options does not mean that almost anyone can do it.
  Unskilled labor is hard labor. Nothing about it is emotionally easy or less taxing on your body. But you can be taught to do it in a couple hours, hence, requires no hard skills.
  There are soft skills that make people better at working a register than others - but the difference is really at the margins.
- Take an RF designer and have them man the till at McDonald's with the day or two of training that most of these places do. See how they fare. I'm an EMT. Peoples lives literally depend on my skills.
  I'd guess the answer would be "be slow at checking people out and be super stressed, but be a net productivity boost to the team".
  Meanwhile, if you made him an EMT with no prior training he'd either just be shadowing an actual EMT and at best be a go-fer, or he'd kill someone. He'd likely be a net negative for a while.
- Yes that's why there's typically more than one person per job title globally
"Anything is possible if you put your mind to it."
— Dr. Jack Ripper

Doesn't matter if it's "skilled" or not, you're still paying someone to do something for you. And if it was trivial, you wouldn't be paying them.

At a restaurant I'm paying the chef and waiters for making me food, no matter what the quality, or if I could make better or not -- because I didn't want to cook, and they did it for me.

That alone is worth paying someone and thanking them.

If only that cost could somehow be included in the price of the food and not reliant upon a voluntary donation from the customer as a % of the bill.
- I agree with that, tips are bad for everything except management (in case they can use tips to pay less and look cheaper) and tax evasion I guess
  Otherwise they're highly discriminatory and a bad customer experience
- The expected tip should be included within the price so the workers are paid fairly by default. Tipping can still exist to show appreciation, but it needs to have a maximum. $1-2 per individual, or $5 combined. They should be extra in every sense of the word. I make sure to tip at least $0.50-$1.00 for perhaps a $2.50 drink at a local coffee shop because I absolutely love that place. I'm tipping to reflect that they're my favorite. That's what it should be like.
It's not a matter of the work being trivial or not. You're mainly paying for someone's time. The labor itself is extra on top of that. We need to work to put food on the table and have clothing/shelter. If you're spending your time doing work for someone else, then you can't spend that time on necessities, which means your employer has to provide it through your pay.
Yeah. Time is money.

It's an actual term of definition though, it refers to work that doesn't require prior training outside of the professional sphere.

Technically not all of those panels belong on the comic because a couple are trades which have their own training and licensing processes that aren't on job learning.

A better naming scheme would be "pre-trained" and "job-trained" labor, but that doesn't mean the concept itself is some sort of lie.

Yhe i mean when I worked in the ice-cream shop in the summer I didn't need training.
But I've been studying macroeconomics for 3 years now and they say it's not enough (lowkey gonna cry)
Edit: I'm not saying the ice-cream job wasn't still intensive, but I could learn most tasks fast BC they are repetitive or by intuition.

As a person with a fucked up back, a strong back is a skill. Don't tell me ditch diggers and porters don't have skills.
Seen here:
How easy it is to manipulate idiots that don't understand subtext.

Eh there's a difference between a job that can be accomplished with on the job training and the right soft skills, vs a job that requires a degree or apprenticeship or something similar

Ultimately it depends on liability and how replaceable you are if your employment terminates. Not that that mindset is a good thing, it's still exploitation, but that's the thought behind it.

Masonry and farming can be complex tasks requiring substantial training too.

Same with a bartender. In many places you need to get specific training for serving, so you don't over serve, and know when to cut people off. On top of that, there's a long list of drinks and cocktails that you're expected to be able to put together at a moment's notice. It's far from unskilled IMO.
I mean, if you're just pouring beer from a tap to a glass and not much more, maybe? As soon as you need to mix, it's much more involved.
Don't get me started on bricklayers/stone masons; definitely not unskilled.
Most of these jobs are benefited by skills. Even a cook or dishwasher, having prior cooking experience or training, even if you're working at a fast food place, having food safety and good kitchen habits and etiquette, so you don't walk into someone standing at the fryer or something - it's still a learned skill.
IMO, the "unskilled labor" title is not accurate, it implies anyone of any skill level (including zero skills), can do the job, which is completely incorrect. There's no way. What it should be, and what it means in my mind is that this is labor with no specific prior knowledge required, which is any task you can learn on the go. If you can show up, never having done the job before, and learn as you go and be not garbage at doing it before the end of the day, then it's a job that doesn't require specialized skills or training to get. It should be marketed in job ads, more like "on the job training" and that the job does not require any college/university, or prior experience.
Anything referred to as "unskilled" is always going to be wrong in my mind.

all labor requires skill, which is why I reject the term "unskilled". In a world in which the value of a person is determined by the value of their labor, calling a job "unskilled" carries the implication that people that are only capable of that labor are worth less. However, that's secondary to the point this post is trying to make and you clearly recognized: everyone deserves a living wage.
- I mean... I get what you're trying to say, but I think your passion is misplaced. It's a nice thought, of course everyone wants to feel valued for their labor.
  Certain labor is worth more than others. And some labor does not require any skills. These are facts. Picking something up and moving it over there does not require any skills unless you want to get silly and say that basic human coordination is a skill. There are jobs out there for simple manual labor like this.
  Everyone that works full time deserves a living wage. Funnel your passion into that point, not the one that is objectively incorrect and will sway people away from your main and very valid point.
Dude. Yes. I was trying to think of a way to say it, but you nailed it.
No matter what you do, as long as you're contributing something (if you're able), you should be able to make a living and not worry about food and shelter and healthcare and the ability to learn new information.
If you go out of your way to learn a difficult skill that requires years of work and training(engineering, medicine, agriculture, etc) then what you do is absolutely skilled labor.

Unskilled usually means no experience required.

I think we should just say the latter.

Regardless of what we call it, it still should be paid a living wage.
- So my 16yo son wants a summer job. He should be able to stock shelves 40 hrs/wk for $1000/wk (the living wage in my metropolitan area)?
  Not allowing there to be entry level jobs that pay below the cost of living prevents youth (and others in certain situations) from being able to enter the market, thereby reducing their skill weekend they do enter later, which easily leads to involuntary unemployment. It actually creates the situation that's attempting to be solved. The higher the cost to businesses for these entry level jobs, the fewer employed in them, and thus the higher the unemployment.
- 🎩's off to that!
- And you don't think solving that equation from the other end should be what happens? Just pay people more ad nauseum while the cost of living continually skyrockets?
It's not even no experience required, it's usually "can learn on the job"...
In theory you could learn any job "on the job", it's just that some jobs would take a lot more of the existing employees time to teach.
Also, if "time to learn" = more pay, then astrophysicts and philosophers would be some of the richest mofos out there.
- In my experience many jobs don't have existing employees to teach anyone, you are the only person who does that job, so if you don't know how to do something you need to be able to figure it out/learn it on your own.
The cross-industry term for "no experience required" is "entry level", not unskilled.
I don't think that there's such a thing as unskilled jobs, because no company would ever advertise that they are seeking "unskilled" laborers. Even jobs like flipping burgers at McDonalds are treated with a certain degree of seriousness and professional reverence by the company themselves. They want to hire people who are quick on their feet, are familiar with how to cook, can memorize orders including substitutions, multitask in the kitchen, and so on. Those are undeniably skills that one must train, either independently or on the job itself.
Unskilled labor is entirely a fictitious term invented by the media to describe jobs that they deem unimportant or trivial, with the sole purpose of denigrating the demographic of people who work those jobs as a primary means to earn a living.
- The cross-industry term for “no experience required” is “entry level”, not unskilled.
  Not true. For example, "entry-level" Python programming jobs will expect you to have experience with the Python programming language.
  They will not teach you Python programming skills, let alone programming skills in general, on-site.
  You're conflating with "no occupation experience" with "no prior experience."
- Unskilled labor is not a media term. It's actually a classification of worker by the government for EB-3 classification. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-third-preference-eb-3
  There is a formal definition of unskilled worker which is performing a role that requires less than 2 years of training or experience.
- Entry-level doesn't mean no experience required, it means no professional experience required.
  An entry level engineering job requires an engineering degree but no work experience. That's literally 4 years of required experience.
  An entry level software engineer job requires you to have a CS degree, bootcamp, or equivalent self-taught hobbyist experience. I haven't heard of any recent entry level software jobs that would accept someone who hasn't even written a hello world before.
  An entry level physician job requires you to have completed a medical residency and medical degree.
Bull.
The idea of forcing Phony Stark to be a farm laborer for a week is quite hilarious, though - he'd probably die within 24 hours (I did say it would be hilarious, after all).
- Jobs that don't require experience may also need on-site training.
  What's the problem?

Unskilled just means pretty much anyone can do it. McDonald's, Walmart cashier, warehouse worker, etc.

You don't need any sort of certification or training. Yes, you need to be "skilled" in that you may need to be physically fit or friendly in social settings, there are definitely plenty of people who are not suited to warehouse work or being a cashier, but if you are suited you can generally start right away with minimal training.

It's still disingenuous to call it unskilled, though. Even those jobs require rudimentary skills that not everyone has. If we diminish the value of these skills, we're just devaluing people even further.
Having to cater to your customers' every need and socializing, keeping eye contact or regulating emotions are necessary skills for a cashier job, yet a mentally disabled person may not have those skills due to their disability. Do you guys just casually forget autism or personality disorders exist?

I've always found it ridiculous how farmers are considered unskilled. Like just anyone can balance on a moving trailer while throwing hay bailes around. It's just soo easy to take a tractor apart and back together again because a gasket blew. It's so easy to have a biggillion different skills varying from field to field. Literally everyone I know can run a mile while carrying a sailt lick. Farmers are just dumb and untalented. Am I right. /S

Since when is farming considered unskilled?
- Quite often in films and books farmers are often depicted as dumb guy with funny twang accent. Also farmers are also depicted in the picture above. Yea it's trying to say all labor is skilled labor but hey OP felt the need to include farmers in the picture.
- Not the farm owners. They are usually the capitalists.
  But "everyone" picking manually asparagus or strawberry or wine grapes is usually from a low income country or an illegal work, working for pennies.
Are you confusing farmers with farm labourers? One runs a highly specialist business, one just needs to pick strawberries.
- Picking strawberries is hard when your back, feet scream for pain every time.
varying from field to field
I see what you did there – intentionally or not!

While I generally agree, there are definitely jobs that are easier to learn and generally are doable by anyone.

Like executives.
- That statement is delusional
- Or pilots, or surgeons. I mean anyone could have a decent attempt at doing ANY job
- Exactly!
- As the CEO (on paper) of a company, who also takes a $1 salary. Yeah. I don't do shit. The employees do everything.
  edit: People downvoting because they think CEOs should be paid their stupid money - fuck off. Money should go to those doing the labor. Executive salaries create poverty wages, lowering executive salaries and paying those doing legitimate work means better wages.
But is it a job anyone would want to do?

From essential workers to unskilled labor in one year!

Why can't it be both? Just because the work you do can be done by anyone with minimal training, doesn't mean it can't be necessary work for society to function properly.
- Because if they really were essential, they wouldn't be paid slave wages.

Strawman. Unskilled /= low pay. High supply of workers/candidates vs. demand is what makes the pay low.

There are plenty unskilled jobs that are relatively well paid because, for whatever reason, not enough people want to do them. Painter/Decorator for example, how hard is it to paint a wall.

"Hard" as in technical difficulty, effort required, or safety risk? The first is the only qualification of "skilled labor." However, all of these factors can affect pay.
In my country it is a three years trade apprenticeships and it is shit payed. Also you see the difference between a good and a bad painter very much.
I don't see a lot of burger flippers standing on a 16 foot ladder
- Because... they lack the skills to climb a ladder???

This is such a dumb take.

Even USSR had a difference between skilled and unskilled workers

Airline mechanic here. We are considered unskilled labor. Enjoy your next flight.

Absolutely untrue in the US. You need an FAA repairman card or your A&P license both of which allow you access to high paying jobs. The fact that you need the certificate makes this skilled by definition.
Ah so that's why my wheel was squeaky /s

I have never heard of a job that required no training in order to do it. That's learning a skill. And if you've already trained yourself in how to do it, you've still learned a skill. I can't think of a job that you can do without any training whatsoever.

It's a matter of degree. Comparing the training of a delivery driver or custodian to that of a doctor, engineer, or professor is, frankly, just stupid. This is what is meant by skilled versus unskilled labour.
- No one made such a comparison. Again- any training or education is learning a skill. It doesn't matter if it's 8 years in a university or 8 hours as a dishwasher. There is no job I can think of that doesn't require at least some training or education. Can you?
The difference is if you require a degree or license or some other certification of non-career training prior to being considered for the job.
You and I have definitely worked for totally different companies then.
- Where have you worked where a job requires absolutely no training whatsoever?

"Retarded" used to be the new sensitive word for what they called a "Moron". He's not a moron he's just "Retarded (slowed)". Now retard is one of the the quickest, cutting insults you can dish out. The word shifted when it got applied to people with metal disabilities.

I guess what I'm saying is, even if we don't called unskilled labor "unskilled labor", lets say we call it "duck jobs" eventually the neutral term "duck jobs" will shift when we apply it to shitty jobs that don't pay well and anyone can do. I used to work a few duck jobs out of school, like loading trucks, but eventually I got back to college and got an internship that lead to a goose job. Now I hope to never do a duck job again.

The point is that those jobs should not be paid badly
It's not about creating a new word to distinguish it, it's about eliminating the distinction
Euphemism treadmill

"Unskilled" is only unskilled because no proper training is provided. But you immediately notice if a cashier or cleaner is skilled or not. A cashier will know all the codes, all weird payment methods etc. And a cleaner needs to know the right tools for work, what chemicals to use and so on.

But if you block training and professional development in those jobs than yeah... they're unskilled and you have asshole justification for paying poverty wages.

No job is unskilled. Not all jobs are skilled.
I work in a "skilled" position where it is completely reasonable to expect to be able to hire someone and have to spend very little time training them. There will be a bit of onboarding as with any job, but the nuts and bolts of how to do their job.
I'm not saying "unskilled" jobs don't deserve a living wage, far from it. I'm just saying there's a reason there's a difference between the two, and one commands a premium.
Janitor here, you can definitely tell between skilled and unskilled in my field

Skill issue

Okay that made me laugh :D

Why is the fellow in the last panel having relations with that sandwich?

Amazon worker peeing in a bottle
- Wendy's employee busting nuts in the hotdogs
That's what "made with love" means. Didn't you know?

If any labor were truly unskilled; you could come in day one and perform as well as those who'd been at it for 10 years. I can't think of one thing where that is the case. Does anyone still test if food has been poisoned by eating it first? Little skill, but man if so that person definitely deserves a good wage.

Ever seen a Walmart greeter?
- They're nice people.
- That is such a dumb concept, the job shouldn't exist in the first place.

Any labor is skilled labor. The only difference is training time.

I think that's a far more useful way to look at it than a simple binary of skilled and unskilled.
I'm a bit fuzzy on how the continuum really relates to wage, because ultimately it's a question of supply and demand.
I guess if you have a rarer skill because it takes longer and is harder to acquire proficiency at, demand will be higher so you won't go for jobs that are easier to acquire the skill for, thus, jobs with a bigger supply of workers? And so that drives the pay offered.

A serious answer: it's more about supply and demand. Unskilled is work that nearly anyone can do. Lots of supply, so wages are lower than jobs where a smaller number of people can do it. I don't think there's any conspiracy there.

Another approach is to divide unpleasant work evenly under everyone who can do it like in the novel The Dispossessed. This will be less efficient since each one needs to acquire the skill and won't reach perfection because they don't stay long enough but to hell with efficiency.

So yes, it is skilled labor and if you call it "unskilled", you have no excuse not to do it from time to time.

There's also the fact manual labor is seem by Anarresti as something to be proud of.
Also, Chevek doesn't directly mention it in the book, but in reality some people simply enjoy hard jobs and would gladily do them if they can make a good living out of them.
- True but I doubt it would be enough.

Technically i am an "unskilled worker" because i did not finish university. Didn't stop me from being the guy who develops the network chips in the company.

thats not what unskilled worker means, technically or not.
I'm happy for you but
weird flex on a post about the less fortunate
- Regarding 1.: in my country, sadly it does. No fancy paper telling that you can do X means "can't do X" even if you can show what you have done. In way too many places.
the fuck is a network chip? why not just use a low power sock running an embedded Linux router? one statement raises so many questions!
- they do exist but are typically made by vendors like Broadcom
- Sometimes, data must be transmitted and received in a more precise way that a normal Ethernet could ever do. You see, those robotics people think "realtime" means to have a message delivered within a millisecond.
  In my system I know where the bits are down to five picoseconds. This requires technology that is a tad more complex than just throwing a dumb PC at the problem (even if it runs Linux).
- You're not getting the necessary thoughtput with a low power socket at the critical infrastructure.

All labor is unskilled labor, but compressed in some manner. Labor is just actions, if those specific actions must be trained, then that training is compressed labor.

Apparently you haven't met any of my coworkers.

/s

Is there such a thing as "skilled labor" as an inverse, or is that also a capitalist myth?

all labor is skilled labor. Some skills are more prevalent than others.
"From each according to his ability"
Trades is a good example. Plumbers and electricians are generally paid quite well. Specialist industrial trades, welders, etc. can be paid amazingly well.
Although so can grass cutters, pool boys and painters and they seem pretty unskilled to me.

If by that you mean socialist, yea I am. Politics isn't banned on lw.
Hexbear and Lemmygrad are hated for their unapologetic left authoritarianism and Stalinism and for harrassment of the democratic Left. They are not hated for being left per se.
Lemmy in general is fairly left-leaning, and if you've got a different political opinion, you are welcome to express it from a right-wing tribune - those are not restricted on this instance too, unless you go full Nazi.
Yea, fucking instance admins who allow criticizing of corporate taking points meant to dismiss workers deserving of a living wage.

Link to original post on Reddit by the author

What about supervising? All I can tell what they do differently to everyone else is sit at a desk and forget to order stock.

even if working those jobs is easy upfront, that doesn't mean it's easy to do it 40 hrs a week. and they certainly require skills some people don't have. construction is hard on the body / bad hours (but i feel like it'd be meditative and build strength), restaurants are stressful as hell (but build your ability to work under real tangible pressure), delivery puts you at risk of dying on the road (and makes you a more experienced driver), etc.