you do not need special skills to apply for the job

That's definitely the textbook economic definition.

But the colloquial definition is that you don't need special skills to do the job. Employees are interchangeable outside some minimal qualifications (rudimentary intellect, marginal physicality, gender).

And therefore you should be able to fully staff your organization paying the lowest prevailing wage rate, so long as some number of unemployed people exist. Anyone can be fired and replaced at any time with near-zero friction.

So when I pay your mom for feet pics, she's working and an unskilled labourer?

I don't think the difference is the minimum education for entry.

I'd say the difference is how much of your paycheck is because of you specifically and how much is for just general labor.

So a physics researcher job is "skilled" because most of the pay is because the specific researcher knows about physics.

But a waiter job is "unskilled" since the skills needed to do the job are the skills needed for basically any job:

• Basic maths skills
• People skills
• Willingness to work
• Physical endurance
• Enthusiasm to work
• Memory
• Handling stressful situations
• Other relatively basic skills

Of those, only physical endurance and people skills are "exclusive" to being a waiter. There are some actual jobs that require no physical endurance. And some jobs don't require as much people skills as being a waiter does. But the rest of them are general across basically every job.

Of course, "unskilled job"s do require skills, I just listed a bunch of them. But most of those skills, any other worker that does any other job would have. Therefore I count payment for those skills as payment for "general labor" and not "payment for you specifically".

That would mean every management job is unskilled and CEOs should be paid minimum wage.

I can dig it.

So all apprentices are unskilled labour?