There are five electricians in town, they each make $40/hour. They have a hard time finding qualified apprentices.
After education, there are 7 electricians. The same 5 electricians still make $40/hour, but the two new electricians make $25/hour. Turns out there's a previously unserved market for a cheaper and less experienced electrician.
(I'm not sure about the specifics of whether everyone's wages go down or the two new electrician's can't find work, but for the purposes of an anecdote it doesn't matter.)
But in the bigger picture this will be a feedback signal to the next class of electricians and they will decide whether to stick with electrician school or look for some other demand gap to fill.
There's a lot of demand for the blue collar equivalent of CRUD apps that isn't met because there are no "cheap" blue collar professionals around.
A lot of people would be willing to pay a plumber to fix their sink, an electrician to replace a light fixture with a ceiling fan or a welder to build hand railings if there were more options for those services that fell between "licensed, insured and too expensive for you" and "questionable quality, affordable prices and nowhere to be found it it breaks"
I suspect I got downvoted because I called Vegas "low rent" which was interpreted as a criticism.
That said, its really hard to find reliable trades people there. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, Etc. My typical experience is that if I manage to find one, after a short while they are over booked with demand. And Vegas has a fairly low cost of living (low rents and house prices) so it would seem that folks who are getting all the work they can handle are doing well.
It's true. I have a room in my house that has no electricity. I need a new junction box and wiring, maybe $200 job. However, my house is 60 years old and anyone who touches it wants to bring it up to code, a $8000 job. I'm not bringing the entire home up to code for this one thing, it's insane. I would gladly pay someone to just replace what needs replacing to the safe but 60 years ago standard, instead I have a dark room.
In a theoretical sense... I guess. In a practical sense with real-life electricians, not so much.
Unlike college, becoming an apprentice electrician isn't terribly costly or time consuming. People climb that mountain all the time on their own dime. The problem is that they run back down once they see the view.
Electrical work is hard, stressful, and sometimes dangerous. Jam a bunch of innocent kids through trade school instead of college, and we'll probably still have a shortage of electricians.
The master electrician's compensation for training the apprentice is the lower wage of the apprentice.
Most MEs I know bill everything out between $90 and $130 per hour during normal business hours. Apprentice is usually getting around $35 per hour. Apprentice has to work for years to become a master.
After education, there are 7 electricians. The same 5 electricians still make $40/hour, but the two new electricians make $25/hour. Turns out there's a previously unserved market for a cheaper and less experienced electrician.