When my aunt graduated high school back in the 1940's, she quickly found two good job possibilities. One was with the railroad, one was with a major steel company. Both jobs had benefits. And both paid well, the kind of money that allowed you to buy a nice house and car.
Does the same situation exist today? Of course not. A high school graduate today might have a choice of a couple of part-time jobs, both with little chance of advancement, and that's it.
Industry is gone from the United States. Our politicians (and shortsighted union leaders) let it slip away. That's a huge part of the problem.
Let it slip away?
They pushed it away with mountains of regulations, piles of benefits and the heaviest corporate taxes in the known universe.
For most of human history each successive generation placed higher requirements on the potential employee, with those who made the cut able to be better off than all the generations before them, and those who could not relegated to poverty. During your aunt's generation, being a high school graduate was enough. Now it is not.
In the middle ages, being able to read and right alone was enough to guarantee one a position of nobility and wealth; do you believe we can go back there? The human race and civilization moves forward, those who can't keep up will fall away; you can't put the genie back in the bottle.