Thanks for sharing your perspective. You sound concerned about this demographic shift. Should we be concerned? What is the harm we should be worried about? Certainly tradespeople deserve respect; manual labor is no picnic compared to a desk job, but surely income is the more important compensation. $200K sounds like a good incentive for what must be unpleasant and risky work of welding in sewers. I don't think I would choose such a job. Perhaps we should be happy if fewer people are welding in sewers. There is a sense in which we can "outsource" some dangerous and unpleasant jobs. We can invest more in materials and technology that requires less maintenance so we don't have to send people into sewers so often, things like robot pigs. We can choose cars and equipment that is more reliable with less maintenance. There are tradeoffs with these decisions, of course. But if fewer young people choose to get into hardhat work, that might raise demand and compensation for those who do.