"The trades suffer from low prestige, " is counting maybe for all rich countries.
We now at last see a slow change towards the return of trade-craft-school education. Everybody agrees it should return, but it's even hard to find adaquate teachers.
Our policy for about thirty years has been to oblige youngsters who are most fit for manual work to study mainly theorethical subjects for two years, from the age of twelve. By the time the two years are over they have lost all interest, even in the manual education they might have aspired to. Many drop outs as a result. Silly development.