There are a number of caveats to this. I appreciate that. But it is actually quite funny seeing this occur, across the "West", pretty much in most developed countries now, not just in the "Anglosphere"...
It's partially a consequence of 'Rona, and the government policies that various countries went for, in response to that. It's partially because of vaccine mandates. It's partly because, so we're told, a bunch of Boomers used 'Rona as the final push they needed, I guess, to retire, and get out. As a result of all that, though? Massive labour shortages, almost everywhere you look.
Media orgs and governments never admit this, but one of the only reasons that this situation can possibly exist is that young people are, increasingly, hugely overqualified, and are unwilling to take positions that they feel are somehow "beneath" them, or basically anything that they might consider "working class" or "unskilled"...
Previous to now, you also had employers not hiring people, because they were "overqualified" (amusingly, had that problem myself. Not anymore, lol), but now, most are seemingly so desperate that this excuse has gone out the window...
In essence though, in much of the world - the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, NZ, Germany, et al, society has spent the last 30-40 years telling young people that the only way to succeed is to: get a degree, probably get another degree, become a "professional" and fuck and/or backstab your way "to the top"...
No wonder young people have become so deluded as to think that manual labour, manufacturing, agriculture, whatever, is all beneath them. Especially when, in Australia at least, you still need to get qualifications, in order to do pretty much any of those jobs...
This was never sustainable. Nor were the ever-increasing levels of "student debt", across much of the West. Yet only now is it seemingly really coming home to roost, and still, it's pretty unlikely you will see anyone with power or influence admitting to any of this...
Personally, I can't wait until the day that this entire (economic, societal, political) house of cards comes crashing down.
Big blue collar money, if you're willing to put up with it, is plumbing. No middle-class suburbanite wants to deal with sewer lines or waste water.
Frankly, all of the trades are perfectly fine.
If you can find an in demand manufacturing job, that can also pay good money. I am currently in talks (had the interview, trying to get a follow-up) with a local corporation to work in their machine shop building transmission cases. I may not necessarily know how to run those machines, but I did show I can do the math needed as well as work through logic problems that come with the work. Just the starting wage would be about $40k, and that is assuming no overtime (spoiler: there will be lots of overtime).
Of course, I realize that many areas may not have those sort of jobs since many local governments are hostile to them.
That's a good job. The career path around machining is actually quite lucrative. Especially if you tell people "yes I'm willing to travel and repair machines in other places" which is apparently a thing that no one wants to do anymore. Not sure why people hate traveling so much.
They don’t necessarily hate travelling. They hate “hard” (as in physical) work, lol…
Hence us becoming a society of blobs. We have every luxury imaginable (in general), and we’re not willing to work for any of it…
Sure, this doesn’t apply to some “professions” (medical, engineering), but a lot of people are just happy to take any highly-credentialed pen-pusher PMC job, these days…
“Management”. “HR”. “Public relations”. “Admin”. “Bureaucrat”. “Marketing”. “Compliance Officers”. “Oversight Committees”. “Board Members”. In fact, almost anything with “officer” in the job title, that is not military… Those are our overlords, and many of them don’t physically DO anything…
Yet those are the highly paid jobs. Not those roles which actually require physical effort, or indeed danger. This is the trouble…
Hence, a society of overpaid blobs, lol…
In this case there would be no travel because they do all of their machining in-house. However, they were struggling to get second shift workers, so I told them during the interview I would be open to that as a shift. Not exactly what I want, but it could be far worse for hours (4pm-2:30am specifically).
Tell me about it. I fix almost everything around my house not because I want to, but because the prices that damn near every tradesman charges are outrageous.
Patch a piece of already exposed, easily accessible copper 1/2" water supply line? $1500. One day's worth of patching up some old mortar on a chimney? $2000. Run a trencher to lay down a new water main? $4000.
It's nuts. And it's because everybody out here has more money than sense.