To say nothing of _competent_ ones. It is a great deal of work to find a tradesperson that is 1) available and 2) competent. Unsurprisingly the most available ones seem to be the least competent.

If you look, most trades limit the number of new students they will accept for apprentiship programs. Even if everyone suddenly wanted to be a plumber (or electrictian, etc) they can't get into the programs that will allow them to become certified.

Its not just the trades, in my state, we have had an epidemic of retirements since 2008 for teachers, nurses, and police officers.

yet the programs that are required to get your licenses don't accept any more applicants per year than they did 15 years ago. The gatekeeping has to stop, or at least be increased to allow the market to actually meet demand. But the groups benefiting from that mismatch in demand have no reason to increase capacity.