I’ve seen the same quality of kids here in the Big Apple — though most are immigrant. Some are prep school kids.
The thing is — a lot of the people with the wrong skill sets grew up in towns thinking their lives were charted for them — work in the factory/mill/plant, get married, buy a house and retire at 65. Well, the factory/mill/plant shut down and they’re left high and dry. Even worse, many of the jobs that require minimal training/skill sets have been taken by illegals.
Yeah, well, life is like that sometimes.
With my engineering background, primarily telecommunications, but I also founded and ran a company that catered to the biomedical industry, specifically servicing things like ventilators and other respiratory therapy equipment, along with some solo stuff in the aerospace biz, I was constantly having to train and retrain on new stuff as it came out. You don't learn this stuff in school and I spent a lot of my free time and my own money staying on top of it. As fast as the technology is and has been changing over the past 25 years or so, you either adapt and learn new skills and equipment, or you get left behind. I was also open to going wherever I had to go to get the work and that included a lot of third world countries. These are some of the reasons why I was able to retire before 40.
A lot of folks think they should never, ever have to move to chase work or take on training for something new. This sort of thinking was fine in the 1950's, but it just doesn't work now. More often than not, folks who find themselves in the position you describe are there by their own actions, or lack of action.....