Word family noun skill deskilling adjective skilful/skillful skilled ≠ unskilled verb deskill adverb skilfully/skillfully
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishunskilledun‧skilled /ˌʌnˈskɪld◂/ ●○○ adjective 1 BEGOOD ATan unskilled worker has not been trained for a particular type of job companies employing unskilled labour (=people who have no special training)2 BEunskilled work, jobs etc do not need people with special skillsExamples from the Corpus
unskilled• Here in these slum streets existed an army of the unskilled, all trying to wrest a living anyway they could.• The demand for unskilled labor is going down; the pool of unskilled labor is growing..• The result: a flooded unskilled labor market.• unskilled labor• The highly educated women who have started working apace are hardly competing with unskilled men.• Members of this, the larger group of temporary workers, were most likely to be unskilled or semi-skilled.• Among the most obvious categories here are the unskilled, the young, black people and those made redundant from manufacturing.• She traveled to Mississippi to help unskilled workers get jobs at shipyards in Pascagoula, the hometown of Lott.• This was inpart due to the emergence of New Unionism which sought to organize unskilled workers.unskilled labour• Here over half the total workforce was unskilled, and here resided nearly half the borough's pool of unskilled labour.• If they are wanted at all they are probably wanted in large numbers and to be made in a hurry by unskilled labour.• It was an industrial structure weighted heavily toward the use of semiskilled and unskilled labour.• That is, where unskilled labour prevailed there was chronic want and deprivation.• The shift from the main traditional occupation, agriculture, to unskilled labour, was considerable.From Longman Business Dictionaryunskilledun‧skilled /ˌʌnˈskɪld◂/ adjectiveHUMAN RESOURCES1an unskilled worker has not been trained for any job that needs special skillsHalf the plant’s unskilled workers risk losing their jobs.Unskilled labour costs four times as much in Britain as in Malaysia.2unskilled work does not need people with special skillsUnskilled industrial jobs are declining. → compare semi-skilled, skilled 