I don’t think the issue is describing the gap, rather that “unskilled labor” has long been used with the implication that, since it doesn’t require extensive training or education to perform at a satisfactory level, the people doing this work are unworthy of receiving decent working conditions or compensation.

There’s also a tendency to negate the contribution of so-called unskilled workers to enabling more prestigious professions to exist. That a surgeon could learn how to do the janitor’s job to a satisfactory level doesn’t change the fact that without agricultural laborers breaking their backs to grow the food they eat, construction workers paving roads or laying out transportation infrastructure they use to get around, or the janitor keeping the hospital from becoming a filthy health hazard, the surgeon could not do their jobs. This atomized view of labor ignores the reality of interdependence between countless jobs to allow society to continue functioning as it does, obfuscating the indispensability of low prestige jobs in order to allow other individuals the time and resources needed to be able to train for and perform higher prestige jobs without having to spend an inordinate amount of their time attending to more fundamental needs like food and shelter.

In no society do you see surgeons, computer programmers, or engineers emerge and begin carrying out their functions without a far greater number of people first doing the heavy lifting of performing these less prestigious jobs. They are fundamental to our society, yet the label unskilled labor is used to minimize this so that people are more liable to tolerate the abuse and degrading conditions those who work these jobs are subjected to.

Why would we need a specific word to describe that gap in the first place? A surgeon is a job, so does a fast food worker. Sure one skill is more rare than the other, but why is it more rare in the first place? Why can’t anyone study to become a qualified surgeon? Why can’t anyone study to do whatever it is they wanted to do?

Add ‘landlord’ to the list of unskilled jobs

It’s not easy. You have to be completely dead inside and ready to fire all your coworkers at a moment’s notice!

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I disagree. A skill is a skill. Some are more skilled than others IN THE SAME SKILL. You cannot objectively compare a different skill with another. If a skill required to do surgery is “more” than flipping a burger, then being good at surgery means you are magically good at flipping burgers, but that is not the case.

So like a CEO?

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The urgency or criticality of the job is not what makes it unskilled.

One can argue that an unskilled supermarket employee can cause economic hardship, or even death (think food poisoning).

There’s no such thing as an unskilled job.They all require training and in all of them you become better as you learn more about that skill. How you learn that skill, in practice or in theory is irrelevant.

Likewise, the fact that some businesses are OK to eat economic losses in bad workers and turnover in order to keep the worker dis-empowered does not make the job “unskilled”

And I made a career in IT from googling shit and remember the steps. Dont see the difference…

Skilled labor is just compressed unskilled labor, at the end of the day labor is labor.

Only skill required for that is lying with a smile

First off, I’d argue that there are vanishingly few truly unskilled jobs - merely that the entry barrier to them are so low that most fully able adults can pick them up in a short amount of time.

I ran into this exact topic roughly half a year ago - so here’s a somewhat rewritten version of what I wrote up, specifically about the skills of company executives - a group which CEOs are a part of.

So, executives. There is no ‘exact’ skill set 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.

Managerial executives are usually focused on economy (i.e resource management) 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 climbed the ranks from within and sat in leadership for decades. On the flip side 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 and also offend your sensibilities in different ways.

Yes. Society needs to show more appreciation for every worker.

What about the, “job” of rich kid celebrity that just exists to be chased by media and brands all day? I feel like you could put anyone in that position with zero training and they’d be fine.

I think Superstore says it best:

Amy: They’re not really gonna replace us! What are they gonna do, find someone who stocks go-backs like Mateo or who works the cash register like Elias?

Myrtle: Yes. Those are both very easy things to do.

The problem is that people generally look down on these types of jobs. Blue collar vs white collar.

Everyone deserves a living thriving wage. You know what’s impressive? A cashier who has memorized every produce code whereas I struggle to remember the syntax of a foreach loop and I have to look it up each time. Wtf is a map type?! When did that become a thing?!

There are also so many “skills/abilities” that aren’t something you learn in school.

I’ve found through my experience that I tend to be a more “valuable” employee because not only do I actually give a shit about what I do, but I also care to ask questions and actually learn about my position and how other positions play into my role. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, it’s just something I’ve noticed very very very few people I’ve worked with do as well.

That’s not something I’ll ever get paid more for because it’s not written on a stupid piece of paper certified by some expensive university, but it’s 100% beneficial to the company.

You do. The most infuriating thing is that there’s people out there who would love to do some of these “unskilled jobs” and are very very good at it. But nobody does it out of choice when they would have to endure massive exploitation, not to mention humiliation.

You matter.

And honest work is honest work. That deserves respect regardless of how much education or paperwork or luck it takes to start.

Even if the work itself is easy, dealing with customers is a skill set too. Too many of my friends couldn’t hold customer facing jobs because they just couldn’t deal with people (understandably).

It’s* probably an unpopular opinion

Yeah, a jobs a job, it should pay a living wage at a minimum. I guess the difference is supply and demand. Anyone can stock shelves at a supermarket, making the employee pool large, meaning they can lower the wage and still get someone desperate.

The government needs to step in and force companies to make that “lower wage” at least liveable.

Although to be honest that may speed up the implementation of robot shelf stockers, which creates another set of problems.

You are reverting to the capitalist brainwashing that has been repeated to you for your entire life.

Nobody is arguing that a grocery stocker requires less skill and training than brain surgery. Literally nobody. And yet you people repeat this idea over and over.

I mean this not as an attack on you but a chance to expand your worldview. Cognitive dissonance hurts, and it’s important to recognize when it’s happening so you can ask further questions.

There is no such thing as an “unskilled worker” because all jobs require skill. It’s called human skill, and it’s what enables us to build societies greater than the sum of its citizens.

The logical conclusion you are suggesting is that because some humans are less capable, they don’t deserve basic needs such as a home, reliable transportation, internet, food, utilities, etc.

And if your basic premise starts with the notion that society should not be meeting the basic needs of its people, then there’s only one thing that would convince you anyway.

My guy do you think jumping on a teams meeting or using Excel and sending emails is difficult? Office work is unskilled work. Management is unskilled work. Having a degree didn’t suddenly make you a skilled worker. Hell, even sys administrator and programming are unskilled, all you have to know is how to Google stuff. They consider car mechanics unskilled for reference.