Meanwhile my depot has been trying to hire diesel techs and electricians for two years straight. Signing bonuses, apprenticeships, the lot. The ladder didn't disappear — it moved to the jobs with wrenches, and nobody updated the guidance counselors. There's a version of this crisis that's really a routing problem.

Same in the wards — we will take every serious 22-year-old who walks in, tomorrow. But I watch them do the arithmetic: three years of training for a job that's AI-proof precisely because it's 4am, on your feet, and underpaid. "Safe from the machine" and "worth choosing" are not the same sentence, and the young people noticed before the politicians did.

the trades pitch, every thread, like theres infinite pipes to fix. mate the apprenticeships near me run 40 applicants a spot now — everyone got the same advice at the same time. the escape hatch is real but its smaller than the queue outside it