yah right sound like from "i hold manager position not bcus dady coporate CEO" unskilled labour is real, instead you sound more like capitalism propaganda
Never worked as a waiter. I don't think I can even fathom the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to make things run as smoothly as they do, especially when it's busy
Anyone who has ever worked food service knows it is absolutely a skill to not throat punch the endless entitled assholes that yell at you over a sandwich that you made exactly as they asked for
Unskilled labor is what is created when you stop kids from having nutritious food, take away all chances of a good education, keep their parents working 3 jobs, and make sure they are one health check up away from poverty. Unskilled labor is real only because we prevent them from getting skills.
fast food, amazon, starbucks, not exactly essential, and does indeed take no real skill to do, literally anyone could be taught the job in a day at most to a satisfactory point, not sure why there's bricklaying and farmer there though cause those are actual skills that take time to time to get right
so what are we supposed to do then? If we need to be "more skilled" to earn a living wage, and everyone becomes skilled then who's left to do those jobs? There is absolutely no world where anyone deserves to not be paid enough to live because they make coffee instead of building houses
i agree, minimum wage *should* be enough to live reasonably comfortably and not have to worry about surprise expenses, food, bills etc. so that needs changing, but i don't think we should be lying to ourselves about the skill requirements for a job just to try making it seem more valulable
there's clearly value in those unskilled jobs or they wouldn't still exist, people want their fast food and their crappy coffee so they don't have to make it themselves, the people who do have to make it should be able to live on the income from saving people time
But that’s the problem, even if a job is easy and anyone can do it, there’s no reason for unskilled labor to exist as a talking point, Because it only exists to devalue.
Someone else in the replies said “you’re getting paid for your time first and foremost, difficulty of the job comes second”
The issue is people are conflating unskilled with unimportant but the fact that matter is a lot of these simple skills do have a low wage ceiling because you wouldn’t accept paying these people more money if it started to inconvenience you,
For example, let’s take something simple like eggs if a carton of eggs used to cost two dollars, but they had to increase the six dollars because if they wanted to pay a person stocking those eggs more you would be upset because now the item you love so much cost more see it all the time
Cause every time somebody suggest that they pay these individuals more and it comes up in actual political discussion, person just like you will always suggest that it doesn’t go above what you make cause you hold your position higher than theirs
if any americans or canadians reading this would be interested, i’m making a discord server for americans considering asylum and canadians willing to help out. i’d be happy to send you all a link if you’re interested!
Please consider joining the fight. You have every reason to run but please consider staying and helping to reshape this country in the vision of the people
"unskilled labor" is not a value judgement of the labor or laborer, but rather a description fact that some sorts of labor requires significantly less training than others, driving down wages for the former relative to the later because it is more easily replaced. 1/
This phenomenon predates the terminology, and would continue to exist just the same even if the terminology was forgotten. Even Marx discussed the phenomenon in Das Kapital! To actually improve the wages for those performing unskilled labor today you'd need to somehow make them less replaceable. 2/
Policies that could actually accomplish this include strengthening unions, lowering unemployment, various worker protections, and moving the economy towards more skilled labor overall (e.g. by making education/training easier to access and encouraging automation of unskilled labor where possible)3/3
That's the thing: the "unskilled" Marx was referring to in Das Capital were people who could not read or write and couldn't count higher than their toes. He was NOT referring to "People who don't have bachelors degrees in something other than humanities" as is now used today.
In both cases it is used to refer to "labor that could be done by most of the workforce without prior experience/significant training time", which, yes, can change meaning depending on the overall education level of the workforce
No, it really can't. If your entire workforce has the equivalent of a bachelors degree, "unskilled labor" does not accurately describe any part of it. It would be like changing the definition of slavery to mean "Tipped employees who sign NDAs." It's a semantic device purely for political ends.
You're welcome to propose/evangelize as alternative term for "labor that most of the current workforce could do without prior experience or significant additional training", but currently "unskilled labor" is the most universal term for that
Yeah, and "degenerates" used to be the most universal term for homosexuals. Doesn't make it true, and I'm not gonna pretend it is just because bad faith arguments to the contrary insist on using it.
Especially since the unskilled labor in the literal sense (as Marx was referring to) STILL EXISTS in agriculture and in underdeveloped economies (eg conflict diamonds). Putting those in even remotely the same category as American service workers is dishonest AT BEST.
There are actual, legally established definitions of unskilled work. It means work which can be learned to be performed to an average level of proficiency in 30 days or less through on-the-job training. The quality of the workforce is not the question. The amount of preexisting skills for the job is
In actual economic discourse, "unskilled" means exactly that: a worker who literally has no skills (cannot read or write, cannot perform precise tasks) or a job he can do. "Low skill" is generally used instead, and purely in relative terms.
Okay, but then why do people in difficult to replace jobs - like teachers and farmers - barely make a living? I cannot see any other reason than the constant propaganda that those job require no brain (which is the opposite of true at that).
Average US teachers had a salary of $72k for the 2023–2024 school year (and public sector jobs in general don't follow normal incentives). Farmers also tend to do decently financially, with the median US farm household having a higher income than the median US household. 1/
It should be noted though that "farmer" can mean lots of different things to different people, which can skew statistics depending on the definition used. Small farms often lose money, but they are also often side gigs for hobby/tax purposes of people who have a well-paying primary job. 2/
Farm hands (the people hired by farmers to work on a farm) do often get paid fairly poorly, but a lot of farm hand labor is unskilled manual labor (and in many cases performed by immigrant/migrant workers who may struggle to get other jobs due to language barriers, lack of legal status, etc.) 3/3
Teachers make about equal to and farmers make more than the median American. Salaries for jobs are largely based on the demand of the skill set relative to the supply.
Plus, in certain low-salary sections, employees are hard to replace even though they don't need much training in advance. I know that from personal experience in the construction sector - nobody wants to do the job, so there is demand but no supply. Replaceable on paper, yes, in practice... no...
Also, many construction-related jobs require one to complete some sort of apprenticeship or other training program before you can perform them independently, and so involve skilled labor
Yes, skilled/unskilled is far from the only factor involved, and certain types of "unskilled" labor demands a salary premium due to being otherwise undesirable relative to other options
Critics of this would say that the market determins your value regardless of skill or effort, and they'd be right. But the obvious thing they miss is that people simply having the ability to survive and not be in abject poverty isnt a choice we should leave to markets. Human life has a base value.
One could argue that a truly free market would not have workers willing to subject themselves to such conditions because competition would allow competitive wages, which corporatization has stifled globally. If only regulations weren't driven by profits in favor of corporations, against individuals
Yes, if the regulatory agencies did their jobs more and we had real anti-trust enforcement and more oversight of the big investment & vc firms, harsher union busting penalties, etc.. we might see more power for labor but the amount of $$ flowing to influence our officials is hard to overcome.
If only the people critical of the sentiment in the original post could understand this complexity and vote in people who would crack down on those abuses instead of someone who spent his life abusing them himself.
I mean, why does an accountant demand a higher wage than a barista? Cause it takes 4+ years to train a junior accountant, and we can train a barista in a week.
Well, accountants will find their job market evaporating faster and faster every year since it's one of those jobs where the bulk of the work can be automated. If a computer program can do it, is it really "skilled" labor?
You can't learn to be a barista in a week, either. Not a good one, at any rate. Like, anyone can learn how to handle a spreadsheet and use it to import, track, and manipulate data in a week - but I wouldn't say that makes them a good accountant. So why are you applying this to a barista?
IMO, "unskilled laborers" are more important to society's day-to-day operation than accountants (or any job you can do from home). COVID proved that to me. Society went from calling people "unskilled laborers" to "essential workers". There was a reason for that.
Going IN TO WORK. The point is going to work and being exposed to COVID-19 vs. being allowed to stay home and work. I apologize for thinking you read at a higher level.
Because any job that you don’t need prior training/experience to get, is going to train you on the job.
The argument is very simple. The phrase “unskilled labor” insinuates that the only way your skills count is if you paid to attain them as opposed to being paid to do so. Nonsense.
How should we distinguish these kinds of jobs from the ones that don't train you? Like the ones where you really need an education? Like engineering or software development?
You DON'T. Everyone knows what a software engineer is. What everyone DOESN'T know is how good any particular software engineer is. If I hire a kid right out of high school and start training him as an engineer, he's an engineer. So is the 30 year veteran with a PhD.
Also, when people use words to say things, it's nice to be able to just say what you mean so you can be understood. It seems like you are mostly objecting to the use of the words. I'd call this a "semantic" argument because it doesn't change anything but the wording. Everything is the same.
The point is LITERALLY the semantics because the words chosen to describe some of the MOST essential jobs is inherently insulting to a huge subset of people simply because they didn’t spend thousands of dollars to learn how to do what they do.
I can think of at least two specific answers to that question:
1) When you are looking for a job. It's kinda useful to know which ones don't require skills you don't have.
2) While doing economic analysis. Knowing which jobs are essentially fungible which aren't.
1)people apply to jobs that require skills they don’t have every day. Most people who give advice on getting jobs suggest that having half a listed skillset makes a job worth applying for. Also, job applications let you know their requirements so the phrase “requires formal schooling” suffices still
I've seen this before, but it's definitely worth a repeat because it is both aesthetically pleasing and incredibly true. I'd like to see a billionaire scrub a toilet.
When the extremely greedy aren’t buying justices on the US Extreme Court or buying giant yachts, they spend $$ on convincing everyone that they *deserve* a giant share of the US economy because they’re brilliant & hard working. https://petersironwood.com/2022/07/09/the-self-made-man/
I’ve longed believed it doesn’t need to be this way. And it doesn’t that’s where the people come in, the ones who aren’t afraid of standing up for better wages.
Not particularly capitalist though, even the Romans used a similar concept when describing the uses of the mob. Degrading the poor is a tale as old as the rich.
Eh, kinda? Unions provide better products as the unions expect better of and better train union members. Capitalism trains people for one day then sends them into the trenches for chicken scratch. Only to tell the survivors “nah”.
Did a research paper on retail stress and found a study that compared old retail to new retail. Claim was that old retail required people skills to sell, while new retail is unskilled.
As a former retail manager, this is wrong. You need DIFFERENT skills now, mainly tech knowledge and multitasking.
Should we add profits for prison holding deportees indefinitely while being forced forced labor…for another for profit corporation. Shareholder value creation at work.
As much as I believe in livable wages, there's definitely such a thing as unskilled labor. Most of the jobs in my life made me depressed because I knew they took no real skill and they could train a monkey to do the job.
America: Created a public education system to guarantee every person living in it has a decent level of math, reading and science skills by the time they're 18
Also America: "Most of us have bo skills and that's really depressing."
society is like a building, even the base blocks are important (in fact theyre probably the most important). any building with a deteriorating base is prone to collapse.
It’s not really a trait of Capitalism but of bad managers. Most Capitalists view productivity incentives as being profit maximizing. Workers at 60% output aren’t as profitable as workers motivated to give 95%
I once watched someone on tiktok live streaming their work at a fastfood make table. Whoever said that shit is unskilled can go do it and tell me how they feel about it. Then go tell me how they feel after their second job. Because you gotta make ends meet with at least 2.
At sixteen I learned to do it in a few hours, I learned to do it really well within a few months. Having done it I will say it's not skilled work (at least not relative to the whole job market). Your second job point is valid though. It's hard work and can be proper graft and deserves a living wage.
It's low skill. Trust me. I know people who can not do restaurant work. They think it's easy until they things go sideways then they're lost, can't cope then quit.
Only regulations/laws can make that happen. While I do not like the term "unskilled", the fact is a corporation will replace a worker with one willing to work for less if they can do the same job, until they find the lowest wage possible. To companies we are commodities ruled by supply and demand.
Exactly. So they can't afford rent, don't have any privacy, don't date, or form new families. People born in the US have a birth rate well below replacement rate.
Because we don't pay them enough to survive much less thrive.
Abd many old boomers stick try to tell us "just work hard, get a better paying job, I did it in my age" like okay, back when you could get a burger for less then a dollar
When boomers were in their 20's people were renting apartments in Manhattan, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta working minimum wage jobs.
Maybe not the best apartments but roof, walls, windows, sleeping area, some kind of kitchen, hot water and heat.
They destroyed that.
I have to disagree. It's supply and demand actually. If there are many people that could easily be found and quickly trained to do the same job, then there is no incentive for the employer to pay more. They simply find someone else willing to do it for less money. Thus, wage levels never increase.
That is a good point. You need skills of some sort to do any kind of labor. It is disgusting though when we have those who have the power to hire base your worth on your job and then pay you hardly anything if they think your job does not warrant it.
Oh yeah literally there are so many people who complain about jobs that are quote on quote unskilled labor or not real jobs but where do middle-aged Karens go to bitch the most
Yeah and at our local nursing home, our staff got “hero pay” of an extra dollar an hour for working short staffed during the pandemic 😷 and the CDC had to come and take over. Had tents outside and everything. But a CNA and housekeeping and janitors are unskilled.
(Not that any harassment or general assault is good. Even if some ppl definitely deserve multiple ass whoopings). Most of the shitty things happen to Wyt ppl are usually due to other richer Wyt ppl or genuinely bad ppl w/ Money (if they happen to be Black, Asian, etc). Not reflective of a culture.
-Since it doesn't affect the one making the changes and signing the checks. Especially since it's well known Wyt ppl still make a percentage more than non-Wyt ppl. And the harassment and assault rate is higher for others than them in schools and places of employment w/ or w/o big diversity numbers.-
All Facts. It doesn't matter if you're a factory worker, teacher, janitor, etc. It's always the basically faceless wealthiest ones at the top who decide to shortchange and abuse their workers. Blaming anyone like women, non-White people, or the LGBTQ doesn't mean a damn thing.-
I think the guy who made this comic is a naive fool, (going off of his other comics) but this is very true, except for one part.
"Unskilled labor" is used on the wrong people. It should refer to CEOs and executives who do almost nothing and make millions
That's incompetence.
Unskilled labor refers to jobs that supposedly take "no skill or effort" like fast food workers, gas station employees, and other people who work minimum wage jobs
There is no such thing as unskilled labor Every job requires some skill Some require very little skill some requires much more & many jobs are in between
No one walks into a restaurant and starts working without training. FUCKING NO ONE! Even if they have years cooking, they'll still get trained
I definitely get what you're saying, and I'll admit that you're right. Now that I put some thought into it, being a CEO does require skill.
That doesn't change the fact that many of them make WAY more than what their job requires for skill
Especially in a country that created a mandatory universal education system through 12th grade explicitly for the purpose of eliminating unskilled labor.
It's primarily an economics term. It refers to jobs you can switch from one to another easily because they don't require much training or specialization. Compare to a job like doctor which, if tomorrow we needed many more doctors, they'd first have to all be extensively trained for years.
I get that, but everyone should be paid enough to live on. No one should work 40 hr a week & live in their car.
When resort towns in the southwest have to legalize workers living their cars in the park bc they can't find affordable housing, that's a problem.
My brother is the head of inventory at his job. He lives in his car and will sleep in his office when it's too cold to sleep in the car. It's more because rent is so high where he lives vs too low of pay. He makes decent money, but corporations own most rental complexes and charge a fortune.
It is, but not one that's a result of the language that's been used for this kind of job for well over a century. It's an economics problem. There's no financial incentive for employers to pay people well if they can quickly train anyone off the street to perform the job. Too easily replaceable.
This is just people getting mad at terminology. "Unskilled labor" is any work that can be learned quickly. It's not "designed" to "keep you down". It's labour that is worth less money because it's easily replaced and easily available.
If jobs were unskilled, no one would be trained to do them. People could just do. Every job I've ever had working in either retail or restaurants trains people. Some do a better job of it than others.
There's low skill and high skill and jobs in between . No such thing as unskilled.
That's just it: even the "low skill" jobs require at least a high school diploma to do.
Did we all just somehow FORGET all the shit we had to do to pass high school? Algebra/Trig? Precalc? Chemistry, physics, english/world lit, essay writing, standardized tests...
It’s also a good bit when conservatives say this because their identities usually stem from being work class joes. Honestly the fact that the wealthy elite have done such a good job of convincing republicans to vote against their own interests is top tier evil genius shit
Thus the birth of "social issues". Fear, anger, and hate are powerful motivators. "Look at the two men getting married while I take your food stamps" shouldn't work, but it does.
I use to work with a wonderful woman who was an immigrant from the Middle East. She had been a doctor in her country but here she was working in a call center while she went back to school at night, because the US doesn’t allow medical licenses to be transferred from other countries except a few.
She was having to take her entire education OVER to be able to practice medicine here. Even though she had already done the work. That includes internship and residency. There should be tests to qualify them in their new country.
I have a video on my profile about the sheer level these immigrants do lettuce from picking to packing and boxing right in the field. If the gringos here think they can, no. I worked in a meat packing company. The immigrants there work so fast you can’t see their hands. I did receiving there.
So the entire C-suite is unskilled. Most office jobs are entirely unskilled. Hell, even a lot of medical jobs only have a short bit of on the job training. This is such a genuinely asinine take that it'd almost be impressive if it weren't so pitiful.
immigrants that probably still didn't learn English yet brought over knowledge on farming, engineering, architecture, medicine, cooking, fashion, etc. hell, they built many of the UNESCO heritage sites in this country (several churches in Baltimore alone).
Capitalism used to rapt people so they can work as slaves, yet they called them "lazy" even though they were doing jobs capitalists would never do. Rapt is aan easy job, unlike working in a field. That's how slavery worked, and replacing it with salary didn't changed that narrative.
TRUE - labor is the value of capitalism, labor works and real wealth is held by the keeper of the tools. If wealth was wise it would supply the needs of labor, freely.
Look closely, and you'll see the Amazon logo. This is a strong indication that the dude is actually urinating on parcels in the returns section: because to do it on outgoing parcels would be against the customers. Pissing on Jeff's gear makes a problem for Jeff, so it's all good. 😉
Comments
Not everybody can do high skilled jobs. Some can't even do ANY job. Why should they be punished with poverty because of it?
Someone else in the replies said “you’re getting paid for your time first and foremost, difficulty of the job comes second”
The closest thing to that in ANY legal context is in military classifications (skilled/unskilled/semiskilled) in the context of technical training.
I mean, why does an accountant demand a higher wage than a barista? Cause it takes 4+ years to train a junior accountant, and we can train a barista in a week.
This is just a red herring.
And accountants did work through covid, but it was at their homes.
Their employment’s precariousness strengthens the argument that their labor is more replaceable.
BTW, I take it you're an accountant, lol!
Because any job that you don’t need prior training/experience to get, is going to train you on the job.
The argument is very simple. The phrase “unskilled labor” insinuates that the only way your skills count is if you paid to attain them as opposed to being paid to do so. Nonsense.
1) When you are looking for a job. It's kinda useful to know which ones don't require skills you don't have.
2) While doing economic analysis. Knowing which jobs are essentially fungible which aren't.
#WorkingClassSolidarity✊🏽🌹 #PowerIsProletariat
Time for UBI!
As a former retail manager, this is wrong. You need DIFFERENT skills now, mainly tech knowledge and multitasking.
Also America: "Most of us have bo skills and that's really depressing."
If a corp pays you to hold a door open for 40 hours a week, if they deem that they need someone to fulfill that role, you deserve a living wage.
The primary thing an employer is taking from you is your time. Skill and experience is second.
The US is rotting.
Because we don't pay them enough to survive much less thrive.
Maybe not the best apartments but roof, walls, windows, sleeping area, some kind of kitchen, hot water and heat.
They destroyed that.
I am live on YouTube, same name.
Read it top to bottom and was confused at first X'D
Hasn't failed to offend yet 😅
Workers of the world unite!
#EatTheRich
Yeah... I remember
"Unskilled labor" is used on the wrong people. It should refer to CEOs and executives who do almost nothing and make millions
Unskilled labor refers to jobs that supposedly take "no skill or effort" like fast food workers, gas station employees, and other people who work minimum wage jobs
No one walks into a restaurant and starts working without training. FUCKING NO ONE! Even if they have years cooking, they'll still get trained
That doesn't change the fact that many of them make WAY more than what their job requires for skill
It always just needed to be called "Trained on Job Site".
When resort towns in the southwest have to legalize workers living their cars in the park bc they can't find affordable housing, that's a problem.
There's low skill and high skill and jobs in between . No such thing as unskilled.
Did we all just somehow FORGET all the shit we had to do to pass high school? Algebra/Trig? Precalc? Chemistry, physics, english/world lit, essay writing, standardized tests...