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ImmigrationProf Blog
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Unskilled Labor

By immigrationprof

With all the talk about immigrants and unskilled labor lately, I was reminded of this passage from the book “Nickel and Dimed”

You might think that unskilled jobs would be a snap forsomeone who holds a Ph.D. and whose normal line of work requires learningentirely new things every couple of weeks. Not so. The first thing I discoveredis that no job, no matter how lowly, is truly “unskilled.” Every one of the sixjobs I entered into in the course of this project required concentration, andmost demanded that I master new terms, new tools, and new skills—from placingorders on restaurant computers to wielding the backpack vacuum cleaner. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed—On (Not)Getting By in America 194 (2001)

BH