Viewing the data is a bit less extreme at first: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST You can see that we are around the mean today. However the population is 2x larger...
all wealthy countries have observed significant falls in household size over the past century. tenements used to have whole multigenerational households in a single room. that's obviously not tenable today (and it shouldn't be) but now the same amount of people needs more units.
Talking to people currently in the industry, they are busier than they’ve been in years. I know people trying to find contractors for small jobs who can’t.
NY and CA may not be having a lot of new construction. But, other places are. California is seeing a population decline
So true. I was surprised to be able to replace a circuit board on a (probably) 20 year old garage door opener. Surprised, in that I had no knowledge of the things, couldn't really be sure I was searching for the right part, no instructions for replacement on YouTube, etc. Fortunately you could look at the drive, see that there was a PC board in there which was screwed in so you could remove it and look it over, google the part number.
Pretty sure if I had called a specialist out to repair it, they would have told me it's not worth repairing, hard to get parts, will just break again in a different way due to its age, just get a new one. And that argument is probably both true and well intended.
Simple example: I was trying to hang some shades in my kid’s room. First set went in fine, second set, my drill hit something too hard for it (brick? Metal?). At this point I’m kind of stuck. I can search Google for this scenario but it’s hard to know conclusively which situation I’m in, and I don’t know how dangerous or destructive what I’m doing could be.
This is probably laughable to lots of you who know, intuitively from experience, what’s happening and what to do, but for someone who had no idea like me, it’s pretty intimidating.
(Coda: we bought stick-on shades and they were trivially easy to install and worked great)
I would like to point you to a subreddit [0] where you can get answers to questions like the one you described. There are lots of people like myself who hang out looking for inexperienced people who just need guidance since they already have the motivation.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/DIY
People post everything from complex projects that took them multiple months to complete to ordinary maintenance tasks like replacing light fixtures or door knobs.
I hang out there a lot. I'm a guy who grew up fixing things and just never stopped even when I had the money to pay someone else. I (we) don't mind passing on useful skills to inexperienced people. It's very satisfying to know that someone tackled a problem that they thought was difficult and solved it using something you recommended.
Good luck!
It can be really hard to start off without someone to at least bounce ideas off of over a beer; one of the nice things about knowing handy people, for sure.
I grew up in a similar household. Fortunately I was the handyman for my family. I never had tools but I used to improvise. I also used to fix some of my hot wheel toy cars and I longed for a soldering iron and pliers.
Now I really wished I could learn in a more formal way on how to repair and maintain things. I have severe anxiety dealing with people and the attitude and workmanship of some of the repairmen makes my anxiety worse.
In the past, schools had shop classes and home economics. I took both when I was growing up. Many schools don't have these classes anymore so kids don't get a foundation in being hands on. They don't get comfortable doing their own things. I think this is bad for society.
I know retired folks who work as handy men who have people in their 20's and early 30's as clients. They do simple things like hang pictures on walls (not joking).
Skilled trades working in plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, and so forth are going to be in higher demand in the future. Many are hitting retirement age and the back fill behind them isn't happening. This is happening at the same time construction is going up. Where I live it's almost impossible to find someone to do minor work around your house. Everyone is off doing the big ticket jobs.
Of course, the idea of recycle old things and buy new isn't working out so well. It's often throw out the old (where we fill dumps at increasing rates) and buy new. Setup by companies who make more money that way. For their financial benefit rather than our or our planets benefit.
Fixing things has never been easier. You can learn a ton a youtube these days. There are books, too. Parts are easier than ever to find and order.