[hannahstrawbrry]

"To fill the gap, Wristen is hiring teens as apprentices right out of high school.

'They’re new. They don’t even have a set of tools,” Wristen said. “It’s usually about four or five months of hell where we have little mistakes that cost us time and money. It’s fixable. … And once they are trained in it, you don’t have those little deals anymore.'"

Oh wow, you mean you have to train apprentices in the trade if you want to have enough workers around to meet demand? My brother is IBEW in the PNW and had a lot of classmates that trained by working for data centers- he always framed it as a pretty sweet deal, some of those companies would even cover the cost of tools for new apprentices, you earn them as you progress through the program.

If you're going to rely on people you have to invest in them- if you're only willing to pay $20/hr for pre-trained people, don't expect them to show you any loyalty in return.