Skilled and Unskilled Work

The distinction between “skilled” and “unskilled” work is omnipresent in everyday life. And yet, what it means differs considerably depending on context. In this chapter, these categories are analyzed from a number of perspectives. With regard to the acquisition of knowledge and skills and their societal organization, we show that concepts in education are often closely connected to the specific national structures of educational systems. With respect to the application and embeddedness in social and organizational processes, there are a variety of job profiles and their categories are bound up with the tasks that these different jobs require. Statistical classifications and other categorization schemes are used to describe these practices. On the level of social anchoring and socio-economic valuation, skills are one of the defining characteristics in the classic distinction between jobs, occupations and professions; however, they need to be understood in culturally and historically sensitive ways. There seems to be widespread agreement as to which work is categorized as “skilled” or “unskilled,” but different societies and discourses have developed their own categorizations, sometimes leading to contradictory evaluations. With the digital transformation of work, we can expect new questions as to just what forms of work will be categorized as “skilled” or “unskilled.”