Yes there are. You can be a trained retail worker in a few hours in most cases. Same with many farming jobs. Same with working the line at fast food. They still work hard and it doesn't mean they don't deserve a living wage.

There's jobs you can fake your way through in a week and there's jobs that take six years to not kill people.

The cliche example is fast food because you really can do it badly on day one. Literacy is optional. English is negotiable. That's unavoidably distinct from jobs that require higher math or high voltage. The fact a surgeon would do worse at flipping burgers than anyone who's worked retail does not change how people skills and sticktoitiveness are no substitute for recognizing a tumor by sight.

We will always need a way to describe that gap. You're welcome to suggest alternatives.

From my experience in both the workforce and reading the news, I feel like CEO is a strong candidate for "unskilled job". I mean, when someone can simultaneously be the CEO for a major car company, a major rocket company, a brain implant company, and an infrastructure company, and be the owner, CTO and Executive Chairman of a major social media company, while still having time to spend all day xitting out their unhinged thoughts to the world, CEO has to be the easiest job in all of humanity.

Some jobs require more skill, and some workers are more skilled. You can't get around that fact. That doesn't mean anyone should be making poverty wages. I think it's fair though that workers are paid more for learning skills. That can be either though paying them more at work, or paying them while they are in education. Note I don't just mean free education, I mean actually giving them money to study. That's the only way to make paying skilled and unskilled workers the same a fair system.

If you can learn your job well enough after a week or so to do it satisfactorily, it's an unskilled job.

There are definitely unskilled jobs. When I was a cart attendant at Target, I was in an unskilled job. If someone with less than two weeks training were left to do one of the jobs I have now, people would literally die.

Exactly. Every job has it's own skills, whether that be mental, physical, or both.
There's not a single job on Earth that you could plop someone into with no practuce and have them instantly be good at it - if someone tells you otherwise they're either incompetent or they're lying (like stated in the above meme)

Unskilled jobs? You mean CEOs and politicians?

First, I don't think "unskilled jobs" is used correctly most of the time and agree with you 99%. My quibble is that people often say "unskilled jobs" to mean "jobs that can be learned to do adequately without prior experience." Some, not most, of the jobs you show fit that category. I wish we had a corrolary to this meme to express the benefit employers get from employees who become skilled at these roles. Purely economically, if I am a manager who can hire someone who has gained great experience and can hit the job running day 1 at an "unskilled" job instead of having to train and performance manage a truly "unskilled" candidate, it would easily justify a 50-100% pay increase as it reduces the cost of management by more than that.

Ever seen someone doing their "unskilled job" all their life?

Why yes, yes I have.

Thank you for making feel I matter when I was stuck in a “unskilled job”

Its probably an unpopular opinion considering the comments here, but I think it should be said that maybe it comes easy for alot of people, but being a cook at a fast food joint like Dairy Queen or Culver's absolutely takes a certain amount of skill. Skill not every person has, or can learn.

When a place is busy, takes a certain process of thought patterns and organization to keep track of all the different ingredients on the griddle, what stage they're at while cooking, while ensuring everything is cooked in a timely manner.

Sure, many people can succeed at learning these skills, not everyone can. It is a skill, and honestly, it's slightly upsetting to see people think it's as easy as breathing, when it's just not for some people. If it were actually that simple, you'd never have to check the bag to make sure they got the order right before you drive off and there wouldn't be videos of fast food workers being mistreated for giving some jerk fries instead of onion rings. Ever.

Imo, although there is overlap, both jobs require some skills that different than the other. Typically, surgeons perform, at most, a handful of types of surgery (per surgery), on 1 or 2 people at a time. They know what surgery will be preformed ahead of time, so they can prepare, and there's a typically a set procedure for the deviations or complications that may arise. Successfully improvising is what sets a great surgeon apart. And, if all is going well, they have teams that can stabilize the patient for an extended amount of time. Fast food workers are assembling multiple orders with multiple foods in minutes. It may take a surgeon years to learn proper surgery, but it doesn't mean they have the skill or mindset that is required to flip burgers.

We should remember who is parroting the “unskilled jobs” thing over and over. It’s always capitalists that benefit from paying these folks poverty wages like the meme states. So while the category can be called “unskilled” to differentiate from jobs that require months/years of formal (or informal) training, capitalists use it as an excuse to exploit. Both things can be true at the same time for different reasons.

I learned how to drive a forklift in a day for a stock room. Capitalists would still call it an “unskilled” job because I didn’t put myself into massive debt with a student loan, spending time I don’t have in a classroom. When does that job suddenly become “skilled”? Is there some imaginary threshold capitalists will accept?

Anyone that is contributing to the pool of labor is using a skill of some sort. Whether you think your job is easier than another or not doesn’t matter. All of the voids are filled with people willing to do a skill. CEOs and landlords, on the other hand, are contributing nothing to the labor pool. Simply owning a thing is not skilled work, but they will tell you otherwise, just like they set the standards for what is “skilled” vs “unskilled.” It’s all skewed to benefit the ruling class and give them an excuse to not pay a living wage.

For context, I’m a programmer that has been in the field for 18 years. Until the working class undoes this conditioning and equally supports each other, nothing will change for the better.

I would disagree. We all need a living wage even for doing the most unskilled labor. Picking up dog poop or shoveling cow poop from one truck to another. There are jobs that require skills,

But everyone deserves a living wage absolutely.

The problem is capitalism, not the fact that our society has unskilled labor jobs

Only "talking back if experienced" is the reason for poverty wages. If they are willing to let us starve for profit, why can't we burn down their homes for bargaining power? Why let them put their value on us in the first place and accept what we are given?