Not everybody has the skill-set or the inclination for a college education, even if it was true, that by definition, a degree at an accredited college always leads to a good paying job, which alas it doesn't. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having skills that are good for farming, or manufacturing, or building, and so forth, and as long as you are a person that believes in doing an honest day's labor for an honest day's wage, there should be a good job out there waiting for you in a country as richly satisfying as America. There was a time when workers could make good wages at jobs that did not necessitate a college education, but since the early 1970s, those types of jobs have plummeted and in consequence are absolutely annihilating the blue collar middle class and shattering their dreams.
There are plenty of cars that are sold in America each year, to which somewhat surprisingly; vehicles such as the Toyota Camry, Honda Odyssey, and Toyota Tundra are considered to be "American" built cars because they are primarily manufactured in Kentucky, Alabama, and Texas. The thing is though that these cars are manufactured by significantly lower compensated blue collar earners that do not come close to getting the unionized wages and benefits that once were commonplace in the greater Detroit area for car manufacturing but have since disappeared through jobs being eliminated, transferred, or re-negotiated for certain new workers so that they will not come close to receiving the previous pay packages of yesteryear. This means that the labor and legacy cost of manufacturing automobiles in America has been reduced considerably since the 1970s, eviscerating the blue collar middle class in this industry.
According to the businessinsider.com: "Back in the year 2000, more than 20 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. Today, about 5 percent of all jobs in America are manufacturing jobs." Of course, these manufacturing jobs often still exist, but they no longer exist in America, and instead have been exported to foreign nations so that the employers of such can take advantage of far lower wages and compensation packages without apparently any negative consequences to them; meaning that these multi-national corporations as a whole hugely benefit their bottom line and competitive edge, while American workers have far fewer options available to them in order to make a good wage and have virtually no earning power when it comes to accepting employment at whatever the prevailing wage might be.
The unions in America are at a huge unfair negotiation disadvantage and often cannot help their workers in achieving the type of fair market labor conditions, contract guarantees, and wage gains that they were previously able to successfully negotiate in the 1930s through the 1970s for many reasons. For instance, many States are able to stymie unions by enacting right-to-work laws which effectively freeze out unions and thereby keeps labor costs low, courts have not been very helpful to the union cause in recent years, and critically the United States government on behalf of multi-national corporations has enacted virtual worldwide "free trade" laws which essentially means that workers in America must now compete against labor wages of peasants from around the globe.
The days of labor being able to sit down at the same table with management and negotiate a fair wage deal are and have been in great peril, because as long as management has the option without penalty to simply export their labor needs to foreign lands, or to transfer jobs to States which give them free rein, they will avail themselves of those same options, over and over again, enriching themselves at the expense of the blue collar middle class.