No doubt about skills required today, and todays craftsmanship needed and appreciated. It's a different world though. Coopers and patternmakers, are now button pushers. The skilled trades today use materials premade, shipped to the job site, preformulated to be fast cheap and easy. Labor is expensive, large portions of the work is automated, behind the scenes in factories. That which isn't is powered on the job with machines. I look up say building a home, and the craft hours required. It takes a defined amount of labor to pick up a board, eye it up, cut it to length, place it, and nail it down. Something that can't be sped up without much more cost than a laborer can provide. But prior to all of that, back when there were no factories, no abundance of power, and limited materials, craftsmen needed to do all. Cut the trees, split the rocks, mix the lime mortar, by hand, from materials locally acquired. Tools were hand made. Joints were hand cut, on the spot. It would take an entire summer to dress the required beams and fittings required to build a barn. There are old souls, and young souls. Maybe it just boils down to that.
Then:
Now:
The Occupational Outlook Handbook is the government's premier source of career guidance featuring hundreds of occupations—such as carpenters, teachers, and veterinarians. Revised annually, the latest version contains employment projections for the 2022-32 decade.
www.bls.gov