Sounds like an industry ripe for disruption.

Private equity has been disrupting it for a while, that's why it's like this.

Very few industries have been broadly "disrupted" by replacements that hire more people to give more individual attention to each customer. It's rather antithetical to the whole model.

Thanks for the warning.

I'm in small town France. I know the picture isn't rosy. E.g., one of the nursing homes near me is Catholic-run and so understaffed that on Sundays, only those attending mass are helped out of bed.

That place pays its nursing assistants a premium, though wages are still low in the field, compared to everything else. There just aren't many people willing to do a tough, rather gross job.