alt Hacker NewsI think a lot of commenters here are projecting this article onto their work lives as tech office workers, but it's really more about the world of unskilled and semi-skilled service/gig workers, like handymen, furniture assemblers, delivery drivers, and so on.
All these things can be true and they reinforce each other: The jobs suck <-> The people willing to do them aren't very happy, skilled or competent <-> The pay is minuscule. And we can't seem to get out of this Nash Equilibrium.
None of those listed jobs is actually unskilled labor. Driving a big truck around narrow roads is a skill most don’t have, doing it at speed and running up and down to actually move the heavy packages is a skill most don’t have. Assembling furniture is a skill most don’t have, especially with complex engineered wood products that will break if stressed wrong. Handymen is literally just a collection of skilled labor jobs rolled into one guy that can handle small home improvement projects like carpentry, masonry, plumbing, and electrical. These are specialized jobs that have wrongly been labeled “un-skilled” or “semi-skilled” as if knowledge work is the only skill of value…