I work with several low-voltage guys on different jobs, both new development and retrofit. It is exceedingly difficult to find good cable guys. Running parallel to romex, staples through the middle of the cable, minimum radius as a non-existent concept... Like you say, the competency is the hard part to find.

And before anyone adds on with 'lol pay more', they try. The people just aren't there.

Almost all homeowners can't pay more than commercial jobs (for the same amount of billable work).

Ergo, if they can, tradespeople take commercial jobs.

Which leaves residential tradesperson as something of a lemon market. (And I wouldn't want to put up with one-off job, haggling about payment, if I had commercial options)

Post COVID burnout (or maybe it’s cognitive dissonance issues?) seems to be a thing too.

Just finding a contractor or business owner able to think clearly is reaching near impossibility.

Like on even the most basic things. It’s quite concerning.

I'd question the correlation to COVID on that one.

The breakdown of the apprentice model ~20 years ago and now-due generational consequences of that change seems more to blame.

Community expertise evaporated with retirement of folks who have been doing it 30+ years.

And without anyone receiving it... many of the folks out there are "let me look up plans at Home Depot before doing the job" types.

It correlated exactly with Covid. And the folks I’m talking about are the same folks pre-covid. They didn’t retire, they’ve lost their minds, very noticeably increasing in particular over the last 3 years.

This fall is part of a steady escalation.

It appears to be heavily correlated with the insane propaganda floating around too.