i am a master of 3 trades. i learn everything i can, every chance i get. the people who own businesses are squeezed to the point that they try to get by on the lowest paid worker who can get a third rate, slapdash job done as quickly as possible. since they are usually business people and not trades people, they may not recognize the difference in a quality or sub standard job. getting quality results, costs more money, that this walmart shopper generation doesn't want to or cannot pay. so we get crap, done by low skilled third world immigration criminals. i have worked with these people. some of them do not have even rudimentary education, let alone know anything about their trade. i have known welders who didn't know what PSI is, carpenters who have never heard of the Pythagorean theorem. if we want to live in a third world country, then lets keep paying for a third rate job. the last job i had there were no raises for any one of the hundred of us for 3 years, and everyone that left was replaced by someone who barely or didn't speak english. there is a disconnect that these "bosses" think that skilled jobs are able to be done by the unskilled and uneducated with pay to fit. something's gotta give. the jobs pay less, the quality gets less. because of the market competition the employers can pay less. i was content scraping by, until the unaffordable health care act went into effect and now i can't make enough to cover my commute. so, no job, been couch surfing for 2 years now, looking for work. i have three trades, i had steady work, with decreasing pay for the previous 10 years. i worked for 9 years straight with no vacation, none. i have no work now, i'm competing with people who don't pay taxes and get as much government assistance as they can, which i will not do. from where i stand, there are not necessarily just a lack of educated, skilled workers but an unwillingness or inability to pay the educated and skilled what they are worth or even enough to barely get by. i'm learning naturopathic medicine right now. i have lots of experience from keeping myself out of the doctor's office for the last 30 plus years. maybe this line of work won't get pulled out from under me. i know it will be in demand, with the medical system in the state it is in. i don't think it can be outsourced, or done by the lowest bidder. we'll see.