Let’s celebrate the arrival of Labor Day (May 1st) with these 3 phrases, relating to laboring and skill: ‘reskilling’, ‘in-labor’ and ‘labor-intensive’.
‘Reskilling’ is the gerund form of ‘to reskill’, which can be both an intransitive and transitive verb, conveying the notion of acquiring new or higher skills in working. This HR (human resource management) term has one related and usually confusing term, ‘to upskill’.
While ‘upskilling’ means learning new skills in a general way, ‘reskilling’ refers more specifically to learning new skills for doing a different job from the regular one.
in labor – Besides its meaning as work, the term ‘labor’ is also associated with the fatigue and painful job of childbirth. The expression ‘to be in labor’ is common in describing the condition of a mother at such a time.
Labor-intensive – This adjective is used to define a (mostly industrial) activity which requires the investment of management in a large workforce or a lot of workers: for example, agriculture, mining, food and hospitality. It’s the opposite of ‘capital-intensive’, for example electricity production where you have a big plant run by a handful of people.