I'll state right up front I don't think manufacturing are good jobs. I think it's the most soulless dehumanizing thing on the planet, and if anyone disagrees I am happy to arrange a visit to a low or mid tech factory. Shipping those jobs to China is the best thing this country ever did.
But people need to set aside "plumbers" as some north star for blue collar work. There is a whole world out here that is a blank spot in the map on these stats that get thrown around. And it is all chronically under employed. Without hyperbole, I really thought about 10 or 15 years ago, that our industry would almost cease to exist because there were no young people coming in to replace retirees. And I don't mean that hyperbolically, I mean actual zero young people. We went a decade without seeing one. Now this has changed in the past 5 years as kids have realized that maybe it's a better opportunity, and I'm happy about that, but there could be a lot more coming in. Most blue collar type companies are always 10%-20% understaffed, in perpetuity. You can do the math on that country wide.
Now a downside to this is that if talented people start to flow in, then less talented get displaced. And we are back to the moron issue. But I am a big UBI proponent anyway.