The world has a shortage of skilled workers.
Over-simplification here, but I’d say that there are two types of skills: Hard and Soft Skills.
Soft skills are intangible whereas hard skills are tangible.
In my opinion both are really important. Soft skills are much harder to value and I think, because of that, people tend to favor (monetarily) people with hard skills.
Hard skills are neat because they are easily measurable. They make a significant difference towards solving a problem.
In school, you can acquire hard skills as an engineer, in finance, or as a designer (or many more). Hard skills are great, but many of them cannot be picked up in the classroom. So you have to go out and work in the real world to learn how to do a lot of different things. Now there are not really many shortcuts to acquiring hard skills — it takes experience and practice. Notice that this is not bound by age but rather time doing something. If you start early, of course you can develop a skill. I think it’s silly to think that you need to be older to acquire a skill.
Now there are also soft skills that are really valuable. For example, communication. There is a lack of emphasis on communication but in reality it is super important to the development of an idea, business, whatever.
I’d say that people are under-prioritizing soft skills but that will correct itself in the future. Soft skills are also poorly associated with words like “hustle” and grind. Words that could mean something but are overused and improperly termed with things that are not really “hustling.” BUT, working hard is a huge competitive advantage. And that should not be looked over.
Anyways…i think that we need to re-prioritize into trying to gain more skills.