An Ode to Low-Skilled Workers: Version 2

Today, I fly to Austin with my son. Want to stay in the loop of all the social events I’m hosting at UATX? Subscribe to my other Substack!

Moving on, here’s the alternate version of yesterday’s essay.

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I love low-skilled workers.

Not in the mawkish, “Let us applaud the dignity of labor before we vote to price it out of existence” way. I mean it literally. I love what they do for me, my family, my friends, my students, my country, and the world. Low-skilled workers make modern life livable. They cook the food, wash the dishes, clean the hotel rooms, stock the shelves, mow the lawns, change the diapers, move the boxes, bag the groceries, pave the roads, pour the concrete, bus the tables, drive the cars, and take out the trash.

Civilization is not just symphonies, microchips, and MRI machines. Civilization is also a clean bathroom at an airport.

This should be obvious. Yet low-skilled workers are probably the most underrated people in the modern economy. The upper-middle class is trained to gush over teachers, nurses, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and “public servants.” Fine. Many of these people do great things. But the workers we praise least often do the work we most immediately miss when it stops.

Imagine a one-day strike by philosophy professors. Then imagine a one-day strike by garbage collectors. I rest my case.

The standard complaint is that low-skilled workers are “unproductive.” Compared to whom? Compared to a superstar programmer, yes. Compared to a surgeon, yes. Compared to a worker who does not exist? No. The low-skilled worker’s marginal product may be modest, but modest is not zero. And when there are millions of such workers, modest adds up to mountains.

The low-skilled worker is the marginal difference between a restaurant that opens and a restaurant that closes. Between a hotel that is clean and a hotel that is filthy. Between a construction crew that finishes this month and a construction crew that finishes next year. Between a nursing home that functions and a nursing home that terrifies.

Once you see this, a great deal of conventional compassion starts to look like thinly veiled contempt.

“We must protect low-skilled workers from competition,” say the friends of the poor, before supporting minimum wages that make it illegal for the least-skilled to get hired.

“We must protect low-skilled Americans from immigrants,” say the nationalists, before excluding millions of people eager to do useful work for mutually agreeable wages. The National Academies’ massive report on the economic and fiscal consequences of immigration is a good antidote to the view that immigrants are mere mouths rather than workers, consumers, taxpayers, and neighbors.

“We must protect neighborhoods from low-end development,” say the progressives, before blocking the construction workers who would build cheaper housing and the service workers who would live in it. The more one learns about housing supply and rent growth, the harder it is to take “protecting affordability” as an excuse for blocking construction.

“We must protect workers from dead-end jobs,” say the credentialists, before requiring more schooling, licensing, certification, and paperwork for occupations that mostly require reliability and practice. Occupational licensing is often sold as consumer protection; in practice, it frequently functions as a barrier to work.

The result is a world where elites endlessly praise “dignity” while legally constricting the opportunities of the very people they claim to honor.

My view is simpler: If someone wants to work, and someone else wants to hire him, rejoice. Do not demand a theory of cosmic justice before allowing them to cooperate. Do not ask whether the job is “good enough” by your standards. Ask whether it is better than the worker’s next-best option. If it is, your interference is not compassion. It is sabotage.

The nobility of low-skilled work is not that it is romantic. Much of it is tiring, repetitive, boring, and unpleasant. The nobility is that people do it anyway because other human beings value the result. That is enough. More than enough.

The economic case is overwhelming. Low-skilled workers expand output. They lower prices. They let higher-skilled workers specialize. A surgeon with a clean operating room, an economist with childcare, a CEO with a functioning supply chain, a parent with takeout dinner, and a tourist with a made bed are all more productive because someone else handled tasks that needed handling.

This is the division of labor. It is not glamorous. It is glorious.

And the moral case is stronger still. Work is one of the main ways human beings enter society as contributors rather than dependents. A job gives people income, habits, contacts, language practice, local knowledge, and self-respect. For immigrants especially, low-skilled work is often the first rung on a ladder. Not a guarantee of riches. A rung. A start. A way in.

The great social tragedy is not that some people begin in low-skilled jobs. The tragedy is that law and prejudice keep so many people from beginning at all. The global losses from keeping workers trapped in poor countries are not small; Michael Clemens famously called migration barriers “trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk”.

When I praise low-skilled workers, I am not saying they should remain low-skilled forever. Quite the opposite. The best way to become more skilled is often to work. Show up. Learn the language. Learn the city. Learn the customers. Learn the machines. Learn what bosses value. Learn what co-workers resent. Learn what punctuality, cheerfulness, and competence are worth in practice. School can help, but the workplace is a school, too — and unlike most schools, it pays students to attend.

Nor am I saying every employer is a saint. Some are jerks. Some are fools. Some are petty tyrants. But the remedy for bad bosses is usually more options, not fewer. A thick labor market is the worker’s best friend. More employers. More customers. More firms. More immigrants. More housing. More mobility. More exit.

The sentimentalist says, “No one should have to do that job.”

The economist replies, “Then who will do it?”

The humane economist adds, “And what happens to the person who wants that job because all his other options are worse?”

There is no shame in low-skilled work. There is shame in idleness enforced by law. There is shame in treating adults like children. There is shame in preferring that a poor immigrant remain poor abroad rather than wash dishes here. There is shame in praising “the working class” while making it illegal to build the apartments, open the businesses, and hire the workers who would let the working class flourish.

So here is my ode:

To the janitor who makes the office usable before the office workers arrive.

To the dishwasher who saves the evening after the diners depart.

To the roofer under the August sun.

To the cashier who absorbs a hundred tiny indignities and still says, “Have a nice day.”

To the hotel maid who restores order after strangers leave chaos.

To the delivery driver who turns my laziness into dinner.

To the immigrant with poor English, little money, and a heroic willingness to start at the bottom.

Thank you. You are not a problem to be solved. You are fellow builders of civilization.

The least we can do is stop getting in your way.