Linguistic analyses of simple low-skill jobs in the low-wage sector show that such jobs often make only very few requirements for use of the written language. But examination of these activities from a semiotic viewpoint shows that even jobs requiring only restricted use of the written language are based on a highly elaborated textuality which has to be decoded by the employees there in the course of everyday work. This article demonstrates the multimodal textual structure of the world of work on the basis of empirical analyses, and examines the consequences for school education and vocational training.