I am in the UK, started n the 80s, with an apprenticeship which was 4 years of low pay but they trained me on the job, with 1 day/ 1 evening a week at college doing electrical engineering theory, for a large dairy facility. That goto me qualified as an enginerring tech so got paid to learn and ended up with HND . I went onto work in a lot of different industries and now am in pharma
I still live in the town where i started out but all the larger companies who would have a maintenance department/employ apprenticeships have closed
The 3 main employers in a 20 mile radius all pay the maintenance guys about the same so people are not incentivised to jump ship
Blue collar /overalls engineers are not given the respect or the training, skills or knowledge and in many cases would get more cash working on production supervisory level
My daughter is looking at University , so i was leafing through a jobs booklet targetted at students and i could see starting salaries listed. Lawyaers, Acountants, Retail managment etc all had high pay, upto 50K. Engineering was 20-25K
I was told by a wise engineer back in the day, "you know what they think of you by what your paid". I agree pay isnt everything, how your treated, the working hours, any perks etc all create the job where your happy to stay
The shortage of good people is due to no industry to speak of in many areas to support training of young people, unwilling managers to employ apprenticships and bright engineering graduates getting pulled into finance type jobs for more pay plus the poor opinion of the engineers by high managment