The reasons for the shortage:
Such jobs aren’t paying enough for blue collar workers to live today the way workers doing those jobs lived fifty years ago.
Fifty years ago, a carpenter working in NYC could afford his own home in a decent neighborhood and could support a non-working wife and children.
Pay blue collar workers enough to be able to live like that today, and you will find all the skilled help you need.
This gets to the heart of the issue right here. I contend that a carpenter working in NYC could afford his own home in a decent neighborhood, and could support a non-working wife and children -- just like he did fifty years ago.
One caveat, though, is that this carpenter would have to accept a standard of living that was the norm fifty years ago. That means an early 1960s-vintage car (if he even owns one), medical insurance that covers nothing more complicated than a broken arm, no cable TV, no cell phone, and no $250,000 undergraduate college education for his kids.
Oh -- and there's no Sloan-Kettering cancer treatment center or Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, either.. If he is afflicted with anything like cardiovascular disease or cancer, he goes home and counts the weeks and days until he checks out.