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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 whole point of the term unskilled labor is that it isn’t.
If you’re on an assembly line and you’re putting part A into box B, it takes an afternoon to learn and you’ll be about as fast as someone who’s been doing it for 30 years.
Either part A is in box B or it isn’t. The difference between the best person and the worst person that’s still worth employing is very small, and probably can’t be trained.
You don’t pay extra for someone with experience putting part A into box B.
But they should be paid a living wage.
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It’s far more complicated, what is the ROI on the multimillion dollar robot to do pick and place, how long before a packaging or dimension change requires reprogramming, or you stop making part B and instead make part C that the robot needs to be adapted for. How much does labor cost.
There’s a quite a few parameters to analyze, but it is frequently cheaper and makes sense not to automate it, and instead pay someone to stand at an assembly line instead.
But then the whole automation thing…. Good for skilled labor (the people building and programming robots and automated assembly lines), not good for unskilled labor. If you’re not qualified or unable to learn another skill, it’s one more job that disappears.
The only thing that matters is how many hours it takes up in a persons day.
And you don’t think the ruling class weaponizes the terminology to prevent wage increases?
people definitely use it in a derogatory way though
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.
So you’re saying training isn’t training? That’s a bold claim. Can you prove it?
And if you think an office janitor is an unskilled job. You’ve never met many good custodians. It’s easy for anyone to go into any field and do a shit job. But whether or not you acknowledge it. Being good at something takes skill regardless of what it is. Even the migrants picking fruit in American fields are highly skilled. Or are you telling me that in less than a single season or week you could match or better them?
I think you’ve forgotten about pilots and surgeons and such… not exactly OJT material.
I think you made a non-sequitur. They never said anything about that. Simply pointed out how all jobs require knowledge and training of some sort to be good at them. Perhaps in the future you should debate in good faith and not create straw men to push a false narrative.
You could hypothetically have on-the-job training for a surgeon, but it takes a lot longer and gets very expensive. That’s probably why they divide it up into pre-med, med school, internships, fellowships, etc. That and it means that companies don’t have to absorb all of the cost of training new surgeons. Maybe it’s not the ultimate solution to the problem since some doctors have difficulty paying off their loans. Unless you are in a highly paid specialty, you could be repaying your loans for many years.
I’ll keep my surgeons having gone to med school tyvm
They literally used to apprentice them. They still could. They don’t but they could.
Do you want a 19th century surgeon?
If I were in the 19th century? Sure. We could still train them that way today even with all the knowledge we now have. It’s only the knowledge that’s outmoded. Not the method of training.
The method of training has severe deficiencies including the absence of standardization. Also surgeons still have apprenticeship they just have to go to med school first
The current method of training has severe deficiencies as well. Often saddling people with 6 to 7 figures of debt. And in the medical field specifically having them work shifts defined by people originally hopped up on meth and cocaine. I’d take a well rested and healthy surgeon any day over one that’s sleep/stress/drug addled.
Oh and there were literal trade groups that set basic standards most times. Listen it’s your prerogative if you want to argue training isn’t training. It isn’t a very defensible position however.
Lol sure. Are you ready to be an architect or a biochemist or an ironworker or a paramedic?
After a decent apprenticeship, a lot of people would.
No shit, the apprenticeship is the exact thing we claim makes a difference.
We can argue where exactly we should draw the line: Is a two year apprenticeship required to qualify as skilled labor? Or is 6 months enough already? Maybe even a one month training course can be considered enough to learn a skill. But the fact is that some jobs require more training than others. And this distinction is worth making in some situations.
I worked in unskilled Labor before, a few minutes teaching so I know what to do, maybe two hours supervised to make sure I don’t fuck up and that’s it.
An apprenticeship is enough to be a biochemist? Lmao go touch some grass.
Training is training regardless of how you receive it isn’t it? Perhaps you should take your own advice.
An unskilled job can be learned in an afternoon. That’s the difference.
Said someone who’s never mastered it. I have a college education myself. And work in IT. I’m just not that much of an egoist to disrespect people like you do. I’ve met truly skilled and great people doing menial jobs and not being compensated enough. You wouldn’t last a week at most of these jobs. You feel you could master in an afternoon. Simply because you’d be dealing with people like yourself.
I don’t understand the need to dogpile on someone who is simply stating that jobs needn’t be divided by skill because all jobs need skills. Racking hay and stacking it up is a skill. Picking and sorting the good from the bad fruit or veggies is a skill. Interacting with mean and disrespectful people who couldn’t care less about your feelings and pretending to be friendly is a skill. Flipping burgers before someone yells at you for taking more than two minutes is a skill.
Obviously, their argument with the biochemist was wrong, and they were misguided, but why the need to pray on their downfall? It’s useless to divide jobs, because they all have skills.
“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.
The crux is here.
Then I’ll do something else that pays more.
What separates skilled from unskilled labor is that the unskilled labor force have no skills to do something else that pays more.
While I support the idea that every job should pay a living wage, the idea that there shouldn’t be a difference in pay based on the rarity of the skillset of the employee of question just isn’t workable in am open market society.
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”.
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.
OK, but why do you think you’re paying teenagers to work in McDonalds and not courting the best neuro-surgeons and rocket scientists?
What is it about their relative skillsets?
OK, but why do you think you’re paying teenagers to work in McDonalds and not courting the best neuro-surgeons and rocket scientists?
… Because I’m not doing anything related to neurology or rocketry?
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.
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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
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.
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.
Unskilled means you don’t need prior skills before being hired. That’s all.
It doesn’t mean someone doesn’t become proficient, or even great at the job while they have it.
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.
You can teach a ditch digger the skills to dig a ditch the day you hire them. Hence they are an unskilled hire.
A strong back is an ability.
So what you’re saying is it takes a day to reach someone the skills to be a ditch digger?
So it’s skilled labor?
They’re unskilled when they get hired, skilled after a day of training. Might not be a lot of skill required, but that’s still not 0
The definition relates to the day of hire. The seeking of new employees. Not the state of those employees after x amount of time working.
Some of the boxes here are too simplistic.
Being a mason, a brick layer, is skilled. But to hire a new person to the crew is unskilled. All they do is carry things, and clean up.
Experienced masons take years to develop, and sometimes include professional certification and education. That’s skilled labor.
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But to hire a new person to the crew is unskilled. All they do is carry things, and clean up
Both of which are skilled tasks. Is it as skilled as the bricklayer? No.
Does it take 0 skill at all? No.
Incredibly simple concepts that it’s funny to see people unable to grasp
Literally watching you not read the definition of the word. You are ascribing your own value judgement on the situation.
An UNSKILLED hire is someone you could hire from anywhere, anyone at all. No prior exposure to the task at all. That’s it. That’s all it means.
If you need to hire a bricklayer who can produce at a high level, to exacting standards, and with knowledge of regulations and best practices, you can’t hire just anyone. You need a SKILLED hire, because you need that employee to start at a veteran level from day 1.
It does not matter how you build that employee, what they learn, or how masterful they get after say one. That’s not what the label refers to. Even if they become the best grocery bagger ever, if you could fire them, and could hire a rookie and get passable results on day one, that’s unskilled labor.
Back to the bricklayer, if you hire an unskilled rookie, they start off carrying shit around and cleaning up, but you eventually train them, they then becoming proficient and skilled at bricklaying, great. That employee can now either request skilled pay/a skilled spot on the crew. Or they can go apply to other companies that demand a skilled employee.
That’s it.
Bagging groceries or carrying things is “unskilled” even though a person could get pretty good at doing it.
Seen here:
How easy it is to manipulate idiots that don’t understand subtext.
To deny the existence of unskilled labor is pure delusion and it alienates people who haven’t drank the koolaid. Instead argue that unskilled labor must still be compensated with at least enough money to be financially secure, same as all full time employment, regardless of what it is.
If you work full time, you shouldn’t need to worry about money. That’s it. Don’t say more.
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.
That’s the entire point of the post.
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.
Can you stand in one spot for twelve hours straight? Can you do it 4 days in a row? I doubt it.
some labor is worth more than others
Duh
some labor does not require any skills
Wrong.
picking something up and moving it doesn’t
Yes it does. Proper lifting technique, the muscles to lift whatever it is, coordination and balance to not drop that shit, likely math skills would be involved in such a job, likely written language skills as well.
Just because you can’t think of the skills it requires immediately doesn’t meant there isnt skill being used
All labor is skilled in some way, thus all labor should be paid fairly.
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.
In the past there probably was more manual labor that couldn’t be automated, so there were many jobs in farming that would be considered unskilled. I would guess that there are many fewer jobs like this now.
varying from field to field
I see what you did there – intentionally or not!
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.
…and yet, (almost) everyone has a back and a pair of feet. Hence, unskilled. Doesn’t matter much if it’s Elon Musk, my next door neighbor or some teen from Thailand picking strawberries. The value of their input labour will be the same in this context.
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.
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
Can you describe exactly what skills executives have that nobody else does?
No, because you’re arguing in bad faith. They said “anyone can do it” which is obvious bullshit as there are enough companies run into the ground by incompetent CEOs. I never said nobody else that is not currently a CEO could do it which is the strawman that you are implying.
which is obvious bullshit as there are enough companies run into the ground by incompetent CEOs.
That’s the point. Running companies into the ground is obviously acceptable for executives or it wouldnt be so common and they’d be getting blackballed. Instead they get golden parachutes.
Clearly destroying companies is acceptable as an executive, and anyone can destroy a company.
Bro just go read about any one that did it and wasn’t qualified. They are in jail/ will never find another job in the area.
Google " failed execs"
Not OP, but I’ll give you a fair shot.
The summary is no, there is no ‘exact’ skillset specific to executives, as there are many types. There are however skills and traits that many have in common that are useful.
I’ll split them into three vague groups.- “politicians”, managers and industry experts.
The first category are social power players more than anything getting into their position due to connections and charisma. Their importance is playing the loyalties of other people - widely considered the most useless execs, even in business circles. If they’d be categorized by “skillset”, it’d be people skills (leadership) and connections to important people.
Managers are usually focused on economy and the running of an organization. They’ll often have both experience and academic knowledge of organizational structures, asset management and economics, helping their organization (at least on paper) make the most of their resources. They can be good at their job, but if they get too focused on the “on paper” economics they fall into the category of “greedy, money grabbing fucks who ruin everything they touch”.
The last and (in my mind) best category are the industry experts. Often they’ll have come from within a company or organization and have in-depth knowledge of how things work and what is “important” in a business. These sorts are the “boring” ones we don’t hear much about, often having started their a business and grown it, or come from within and sat in leadership for decades. On the flipside they’ll have opinions without any obvious basis, “This is just how it is done”, which is in many cases important, but in others pure BS.
In all three categories you’ll find execs who are good and bad in different ways.
Are you a sociopath? If no, then you’re not qualified.
Exactly!
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Or pilots, or surgeons. I mean anyone could have a decent attempt at doing ANY job
yeah, at least once :D
Those jobs have qualifications and training requirements.
Oh sorry, I thought we were ignoring obvious real world requirements
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.
You literally are not doing any labor, and are not getting paid. Is that supposed to be a gotcha?
No…it was agreeing to the fact that CEOs shouldn’t be paid ridiculous amounts. Since I don’t do the labor, I don’t take pay, and that’s how it should be.
I fail to see how that is a gotcha? Do people here actually think CEOs should be paid for that? If so, I maintain my stance, they shouldn’t.
But is it a job anyone would want to do?
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.
🎩’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?
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.
So during not-summer who is stocking shelves? My guess to your answer is that high schoolers will, but then who will work fast food restaurants during school hours?
Too many jobs are considered “entry level”. If people used them as stepping stone jobs, the companies would cease to function properly.
For example my father thinks that all fast food positions except Manager are entry level. But I can guarantee you he’d be pissed if only the manager was working in the mornings when he wants coffee.
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.”
“Experience” is generally defined as prior work history in the same field, not occupational knowledge. An entry level job necessarily means that you can apply for the job and still have a chance to get hired even if it is your first ever job (or, in a perfect world, that’s what it would mean, yet we live in a world where “entry level” job postings exist that also require 3-5 years of prior work history in the field).
Of course, just because it’s an entry level position, that doesn’t mean that someone who knows nothing about the job they are applying for can get it. That’s why I specified that every job has skills that you need to train either on the job or independently. In the case of python programming, you would absolutely need those skills down pat before applying to the job, because the expectation is that you are sufficiently competent with the language and can start on projects right away.
In my experience, maybe 20% of your job is based on what you know about the language going in. The rest is learning that particular companies pipelines, practices, and code base. Junior devs are absolutely expected to learn on the job, both about the product and development in general.
Junior devs are expected to learn on the job, but to come in with a solid base level of proficiency.
My internships and first junior position didn’t require me to know the language they used, but they required me to know a similar language and be able to program already. Being able to at least write pseudocode was absolutely required for those interviews.
You can absolutely be trained on the job for a python career. I am Software Developer and was mostly trained on the job before I received the title.
I’m curious. Did you have any prior Python programming experience or any programming experience at all before getting the position?
Not formal. Although I wrote Powershell scripts for the team I was on previously.
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.
Tell this to all the “entry level” positions that wanted 3-5 years of experience. Searching for a CS job with just a degree was terrible.
That’s not to say I disagree with you though. Entry level should be the actual entry point into a field
Yes, we are on the same page. See my other reply to another similar comment below.
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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.
What do you want to call it? Just curious, we love to criticize but not offer suggestions
Why try to draw an arbitrary division like that in the first place? There are a lot of “skilled labor” positions that don’t actually require any certification or training. And there are a lot of “unskilled labor” positions that do require training. It kind of just seems like a way to dismiss certain types of labor as “lower” than others, at least that’s how the term is used in a majority of contexts.
Unspecialized is a bit less dismissive of a term
Generalized would be a good contrast to specialized that generally lacks biases.
I got into an argument with someone about this. I ended up proposing generalized versus specialized.
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?
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???
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.
I thought the A&P counted as an associates degree
Ah so that’s why my wheel was squeaky /s
