Indeed.

I attended an injection molding conference and one of the panel discussions was about the poor state of hiring and retention. I stayed expecting to hear the standard complaints about the fact that injection molding was considered "obsolete" (really?), the pipeline was too weak so wages were out of hand and there was too much churn. I was interested in which companies were hiring off the people so much that it warranted a panel session.

Then I heard the complaints of what their primary competitor was: Amazon warehouses. They were losing injection molding workers to freakin' Amazon floor jobs!

I lost it and lit off on an absolute rant about how if a company couldn't keep their employees from joining one of the objectively worst employers in the country then they absolutely deserved to go bankrupt.

I, very suddenly, made both a bunch of friends and a bunch of enemies that day.

This is for things like process workers in Petro/chemical plants, mechanics for assembly or machining, painters, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, all kinds of stuff. The government also subsidizes the apprentice program so it's very cheap to train young workers.

The people who choose this path generally end up pretty well off, being able to buy a house or apartment by like mid to late twenties and make even more later.