Kids these days: afraid to get their hands dirty? Or is the industry to blame?

 A processor and moldmaker from India, recently describing to me his firm's elaborate employee training program, said it was modeled on the old German one for apprentices, "but our guys still are willing to get their hands dirty," he said. His tone had no suggestion of superiority in it, but rather implied that he was simply repeating the truth. There was some pride in it as well; his company,after all, supplies molds and molded assemblies to some of the top OEMs in the Western world. The best apprentices even are taught German in their third (final) year of the program so they can talk to customers in their mother tongue. English fluency is a given for the company's employees.     

Is the situation truly so dire in Western Europe and North America? Is the next generation of moldmakers and processors so difficult to find because they don't want to work with their hands in an industrial setting? Or has the industry not done a solid job of marketing itself as a place where today's youth can find interesting work, solid pay and a stable position?