The two Rove quotes in question are:

I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas.

And:

Now frankly, I don’t want my kid digging ditches. I don’t want my kid slinging tar. But I know somebody’s got to do it. And we ought to have a system that allows people who want to come here to work to do jobs for which Americans are not lining up.

Looking at Rove’s language here, I think it’s possible to interpret these statements in two different ways. The first is that Rove is saying he doesn’t want his son to work those jobs at all—the implication being that such work would be beneath him or a waste of time.

The second way of looking at it, and I think the one that’s at least somewhat more probable, is that he doesn’t want his son getting stuck in such a position, presumably as a long-term occupation. Notice in the first quote, he says he doesn’t want his son to “have to” work those jobs. In the second quote he mentions road construction work that’s not typically associated with part time summer labor (at least not in the same ways as retail or restaurant work). He also intimates in the final sentence that what he wants is to make sure those jobs are filled so that other workers (like his son, presumably) aren’t pulled downwards. Make of this what you will; I think it’s more likely (though not entirely certain) that Rove didn’t intend to impugn lower-wage labor, but instead expressed the rather more reasonable view that he would prefer his child not to get stuck in such a position for an extended period of time.

That said, I’ll throw in my support for the value of low-paying beginner’s jobs. I did it all: mowed lawns, waited tables at a giant-sized beachside tourist restaurant for numerous summers, bagged groceries, worked in kitchens and various retail positions. My sense has always been that many folks who did that kind of work came out better prepared for the rest of life. But I suspect that Rove isn’t saying that that sort of work should be looked down upon as a matter of course, merely that he doesn’t want his child stuck without other options.