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skill issue
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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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Skilled labor refers to jobs that require certification and training that imply specific distinct skill sets. For example if I tell you Im a mason, a plumber, or a radiologist you know exactly what my skills are.
Unskilled labor jobs are not jobs that lack skills rather they are the roles whose titles do not imply specific skills, tasks or educations. Im a wine importer what does. that tell you about what I know or can do? Can you tell my skill at say driving a forklift from that title?
Unskilled labor doesn’t mean you have no skills
Which is exactly the point of the post: there is no such thing as unskilled labour. This label must die
that's such a pedantic point
Well, I do respond in kind to dumb attempts at arguing
No, it shouldn’t because this is an incredibly useful concept in economics which you would understand if you had taken economics courses.
Edit: to those without this background it is very useful to determine the stability of an economy if all the people with jobs that take years of training, which are skilled labor, suddenly start to flee as that suggests that the economy is collapsing.
Ive taken many economic courses, none of which talk about "skilled" or "unskilled labour". They do, however, brainwash the fuck out of you into believing the post-scarcity capilist need for ever increasing profits not only makes sense, but is a necessary facet of society.
Yeah I don’t believe you have taken or at the least understood any courses in economics if that’s your takeaway.
Not learning about unskilled and skilled labor in economics is akin to claiming you didn’t learn what the Pythagorean theorem in geometry. It is extremely unlikely to be true that you weren’t taught this as it is very basic stuff.
It's derogatory and innacurate description, workers aren't a commodity. Having a college degree doesn't mean you're a specialist. You don't have to have a certification or degree to be skilled. Economist isn't a skilled job because you can't predict the future, it's a self fullfilling prophecy when you apply your own perceptions into descision making. Not everything is a predictable pattern.
No, it is not. It is a term in economics for specific jobs and it shouldn’t be responded to emotionally. It’s science.
Maybe consider that as you have no education in economics, as is evident by your claims that economists intend to predict the future rather than explained what has already happened, that your reaction is not coming from a place of understanding.
This isn’t intended to debase people and my own career is “unskilled” despite requiring years of “education” to do well (I’m in wine/liquor).
It's not a science, it's a cult.
Ok so that’s a different subject you should look into namely “what does ‘science’ mean and what does and does not make something scientific” because you are totally wrong about this.
Again as you have already proven that you have no idea what economists do maybe you shouldn’t be taking definitive positions on this subject.
MIT offers their economics coursework for free if you care to actually learn it.
I took econ in college and got a 4.0. It's bullshit.
No, you did not.
Lol. Did I say "label" or "concept"? You would know the difference if you had taken linguistics/logic courses, but alas
It’s the same thing in both cases which you would know if you had a background in either of the subjects you listed.
Fun fact: it is not
Just because it's a term you learned in school doesn't mean it's not used to hold people back. The term is used to imply that people who aren't skilled don't deserve a living wage and lots of voters fall for it and push the narrative that if you flip burgers you don't deserve to pay rent on time and go to the movies on the same month.
You are having a purely emotional response to scientific jargon. What are you trying to do here? Nothing you state is true within the context of the field.
It's an emotional response to point out how a word has been used to keep people from being paid what they're worth? I think it's an emotional response to cling so hard to a word that could very easily be changed and hurt no one.
No, why do you think that is the case? Most wages are paid out based on what the market fr that job pays not based on whether it is skilled or unskilled. My brother makes more in sales (unskilled) than my buddy who is a neurosurgeon.
It’s scientific jargon. If you are having an emotional response to it that’s not the fault if the field.
Because I've heard people use it as an excuse for why minimum wage shouldn't cover bills and they vote accordingly. Language matters.
Scientific jargon can and has changed to better represent what they're talking about no reason this can't either unless that makes some people too... emotional.
That is a way better example than I was planning on using if this kept going thanks
We're humans who have emotional responses to things, and we should be cognizant of that when choosing our words. We should also be aware of how bad actors may use our words to manipulate public opinion via those emotions.
We don't use things like mongoloid or crippled anymore even though they were once considered perfectly acceptable medical terms. Unskilled is inherently derogatory, and the thesaurus is offering alternatives such as fundamental, foundational, or generalized. I like generalized labor the best so far, because it contrasts perfectly with specialized.
Good news don't travel so fast. Changing the term to something harder to make derogatory would be a much better solution.
Mate, this is very meta with the OP in a bad way. Dismissing someone this way really goes against the values here. Not everyone had the chance to take higher education courses. And not having that chance does not invalidate immediately their views.
It does when we are speaking about terminology taken directly from a specific science.
You do not get to define how an academic field uses terms because of an emotional response derived from your inexperience with a subject.
Finally MIT literally offers all of this online for free and have for 10-15 years. If you want to learn you can.
There definitely are jobs that are truly unskilled.
These are jobs any able-bodied person can do without any training. Then you have very low skilled jobs such as being part of a moving crew for moving companies. For that one you need to be careful moving heavy and/or fragile objects without breaking them or damaging surroundings. But that’s really more about paying attention to what you’re doing than a skill you would receive training to do.
Skilled labor is economics jargon. Skilled labor jobs are ones that if you are told someone does you’ll know more or less what they can do and what their job normally requires. All jobs require skills but skilled labor requires certifications of training and frequently takes years to earn.
Right but this argument is due to a conflict between economics jargon and everyday language. The people opposed to the term “unskilled labour” are unhappy about the negative connotations of the word “unskilled.”
To phrase this differently these people are taking a term from economics used in an economic context and responding to it out of ignorance.
I disagree. This is a term which exists simultaneously in economics and in everyday speech. The everyday meaning has negative connotations whereas the economics term does not. People are responding to this conflict by trying to get economists to change their term in order to avoid the negative connotations.
I, personally, don’t agree with this approach to language in any case. Linguistic prescriptivism of this sort is authoritarian and highly susceptible to backlash. It’s vulnerable to the mistaken belief that if someone accedes to an authority’s demands, they now agree with the authority.
Except when you see it in “everyday speech” it is still being used in an economic context. Try using skilled or unskilled labor in a sentence where you aren’t discussing economics.
Everyday speech in an economic context but not by economists. That’s the difference. Two surgeons discussing an appendectomy over lunch is different from two random people in a bar discussing an appendectomy.
They’re both using a term from a technical context but their understanding of the technical meaning of the term is different and the connotations are different.
The media uses it the same way economists do.
A CDL bearing truck driver is unskilled because despite the certification that job does not immediately communicate specific skill sets as not all CDL drivers can operate all vehicles. That’s why they aren’t skilled.
My point was my job title does not imply any specific skills not that forklift operators are skilled labor (which I never claimed). You cannot tell whether or not I know how to operate a forklift based on my title. Now if I said I was a mason instead of a wine importer you would know exactly what I am capable of doing because a mason is a job that has specific skills.
Skilled and unskilled can be further broken down but as geberal concepts that should be similar/the same for all aspects of government
That’s wrong they are skilled labor as they meet all the same qualifications- long term of training, a title that specifically describes what they do, and professional certifications proving this.
That’s because you keep looking in the wrong places like USCIS as opposed to say the department of Labor. You could also just google “skilled vs unskilled labor”.
No it does not. That is the mistake that people with no background in economics make all the time. This thread is filled with people continually making this error.
Yes you know a mason can build your retaining wall and you also know they are not experts in plumbing.
Contrasting the above with a CDL driver A CDL driver who can drive a tractor trailerikely can drive most trucks but not everyone with a CDL is capable of doing so so the job “commercial truck driver” isn’t skilled.
Yes. they do.
US customs and immigration services is not the people who determine this.
Neither is
Nope because there are many different kinds of forklifts and not everyone can operate all versions. For example Raymond articulated swing arm lift that’s in my warehouse most people can’t drive because the forks are on the side and it does an entirely different job than what most people think of when they think if a forklift.
And the third option was googling “skilled vs unskilled labor”.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/skilled-labor.asp