I deal with tradespeople on and off and I have a feeling the work quality has drastically reduced from say 30 years so. There are a bunch of contributing factors which I'm a bit tired to list down here. The net result has been that the person who does the final actual work (brick laying, wood cutting, painting etc.,) is almost always poorly skilled, are constantly cutting corners. Even if I'm willing to pay more than the market rate there just aren't such workers anymore. And it shows in the things that's getting built.
