We've had decades of large companies laying people off (effectively) without warning, and the lessons of "don't trust an employer" are... fairly well understood by a lot of folks. If I had the promise of working some place for, say, 20 years, with a statistically 0% chance of being let go because someone wanted to goose the quarterly numbers to get their bonus... yeah, I'd have gone for it years ago. Even 25 years ago, that wasn't much of an option with most companies. Lean/Kaizen/JIT were all big movements by the 90s and ability to ramp down headcount was a requirement for most companies.
Where does 'skilled' labor for specific types of manufacturing processes come from? High school? With slashed budgets and worsening teacher/student ratios?
Businesses could step up and create environments that people competed to work at - pay decently, invest in their workers and community - but that requires a commitment to stick with the people and community even in the lean times. And most companies don't want to, or more likely simply can't, operate that way.
30 years ago I considered positions like that. Some of my family and friends did, and were there for years - decades in some cases. I don't think there's many of those left any more.
