I recall the word 'roustabout' was also used at circuses -- it referred to the men who assembled and raised the circus tents.

roust
1658, probably an alteration of rouse. Roustabout "deck hand, wharf worker" is from 1868, perhaps from roust + about, but another theory connects it to Brit. dial. rousing "rough, shaggy," a word associated perhaps with rooster.

Circuses, yes, archaically sometimes in the oil patch, but "unskilled" ???

Never!

When items of equipment can easily remove a finger, hand, arm or a life, and one must rely upon and trust the other crew members to work safely, there is definitely a considerable amount of "skill" required to do this job.

In our area*, the term used is/has been "Roughneck" ... for more than 50 years ... that suggests this nomenclature is more than a mere passing colloquialism.

*One of the top five oil-producing states in the US of A.

I have a hawk who lives in the trees in my back yard. And this
lovely bird does a roustabout, featherwise, all the time s/he
is roosted in the trees.

noun: A casual or unskilled laborer, especially on an oil rig.

These words come from Anu's MEANING of today's word.

What I posted comes from Online Etymology . You could send your
point of vieuw as feedback to AWAD. You will find the way to it on the sitemap ( see right on top op this page).

I agree with you 'unskilled ' sounds unlikely .

It seems that "unskilled" is often used as a catch-all word meaning that the work does not require a tertiary academic qualification. The obsessive fixation in many countries with university education has seen almost any other sort of employment socially devalued, as reflected in the use of "unskilled" to describe many, many jobs which are quite self-evidently not unskilled.

There are plenty of people, who in my life have pulled me from
some danger or predicament, who may be called unskilled. But
they were expert in their assessment of what to do, and they
did it. Without their aid I would have been in a real
problematic situation.

The term 'unskilled' doesn't usually imply non-academically qualified. It means 'not having or needing skill or special training' (Concise Oxford). Normally it is applied to laboring jobs as opposed to those which require an apprenticeship, trade course or other specific learning and skills training (including, but not limited to, academic qualifications). Examples of unskilled labor would be things like fruit-picking, working on a road gang, garbage collector (that's trashman to you Americans or dustman to you Brits), factory production line worker, or any other job that requires little or no training and can be commenced immediately. Examples of labor that are skilled yet non-academic would include fork-lift driver, crane chaser, bricklayer, jackaroo (cowboy), farmer.

Usually we call them garbage men. Or either sanitary engineers, one. I don't think I've ever heard trashman.

trashmen : surfin' bird

Bluebirds the word

Here in my city it is 'trashmen' or 'trash-haulers', garbagemen being pejorative.

Stravinsky once said about his music: ' It is a rare form of kleptomania.'
Not that rare.