I think a lot of folks confuse or don't understand the difference between a true skilled trade and an occupation. All skilled trades are occupations, but not all occupations are skilled trades. Everybody's a "professional" now too, at least the ones who haven't been reclassified as "heroes." (No I'm not a grumpy old man!)
For myself, I did a tool and die apprenticeship in the early '70's. It's a great trade and I love the work. A lot of the work has gone away, however. With CNC a lot of the fixturing has been eliminated for production machining and grinding form tools for production turning is a thing of the past as well. Press dies, die-casting dies and plastic molds are still important, but much less work is entailed in making them now with CNC capabilities in the toolroom. There's still some gage work, but CMM's have taken over most of what was done with gages in the past.
If I were looking to get into a trade today I think it would be electrician. Absent any unlikely and truly astonishing technological breakthrough, we're going to be using electricity for some time. It's one of the trades, also, that doesn't take a huge investment to go independent.
I've done quite a bit of welding, and I like it, but it's not something I'd want to do day in and day out. Guys I've known who've done it for years all seem to have had some sort of health issues.
