>But western societies don't seem to have a "We need X people with Y skillset" institution. If someone came to me like, "we need a welder to produce $needed_thing" then i would have put my skill points into that.

We do, it's called the price of labor. We currently need highly educated healthcare professionals like a forest fire needs rain. These wages are literally off the chart:

BLS list: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/highest-paying.htm

Another list: https://www.careeronestop.org/Toolkit/Wages/highest-paying-c...