By the way, the way that No Child Left Behind impacts the trade worker shortage in the US is because in about 2002 shop classes, home ec classes, auto classes, etc, had their funding diverted into teaching kids how to pass standardized tests so that the schools could continue to pay teachers and keep the library open.
It’s hard to figure out that you might be interested in plumbing as a career when you’ve spent twelve years learning how to pass multiple choice tests and having ceramics and band as the only available electives.
This is one place where I actually WILL do the generational thing and say that Millennials and Gen Z got completely fucked in a way that older generations didn’t.
It’s actually really fucking hard to repair a cabinet when you’ve never had a shop class. It’s really goddamned difficult to learn everything about car maintenance on your own through youtube videos instead of in a semester of auto shop. It’s really goddamned difficult to figure out you want to be a plumber or an electrician or a welder when you are eighteen years old, have been taught to pass tests and cajoled into applying for college, and you’ve never handled an air compressor or used a socket wrench.