I agree Spruce that certain trades have been devalued.
Take plumbing, you don't even need qualifications to be a plumber you can just crack on which many do.
Funny thing is the skills you mentioned i picked up during my mechanical engineering apprenticeship.
Which a few years back covered a lot.
Electricians can take a course lasting several weeks to become qualified which is madness.
However in industry they wouldn't get a foot in the door.
Where I work we still take proper apprentices on both mechanical and electrical, the course is 4 years like it ought to be.
Should they stay in the industry I can see them having quite a successful time of it.
They will be in demand due to the average age of real tradesmen being very high.
Sadly there comes a time when the bar will get dropped lower. Industry will have to 'let them in' but train them (electricians) further in the field that applies to that industry. He won't be any good anywhere else without learning a new set of skills. Health and Safety will police that.
A fellow window cleaner in town was a fitter and turner. The last job he had before the owner sold out was to make those 1mm welding nozzles by the thousands. Once the order was complete in came another order, and another. That is all they were doing. At one time they were making and machining spare parts - no demand for that now. He says that if you could tolerate the boredom then any non qualified person could do it.
Look at the motor trade. A mechanic was a skilled person. He knew about tolerances in wheel bearings, he could set up the gap in a set of points and spark plugs by sight and then set the timing by ear perfectly whilst the engine was running. As a youngster I challenged an old boy we had working in the garage to check his timing he had set up with a timing light. It was absolutely perfect. Do they need that skill today? No as the computer they plug in analyses the problem and then gives them a step by step instruction on how to correct it.
They would white metal crankshaft bearing and then scrape them to fit the bearing journal using engineer's blue. Can any young one do it today? No, but things have moved on and they don't need that skill any longer.