[panic]

They're making plenty of money -- as the article says, "[The general contractors] have all the power and charge accordingly." I'd say it has more to do with people (including their parents and peers) seeing college as necessary and not considering a construction industry career at all.

[TheAdamAndChe]

Now that the labor pool has adjusted following the recession, of course they change what they charge. For decades, though, wages for those folks have been stagnant and quality of life limited, which is why their parents and peers pushed them to go into different fields. I guarantee that if wages had increased as much as the stock market had in that time, there wouldn't be such a limited pool of contractors at the moment.