As Woodsy points out the decline of trades into shortened timelines to fill gaps, whilst my chosen early career is not recognized as a trade but more of an art that of an open crane operator where one has to have the 'nouse to operate as written on my original ticket "Operate any crane other than driven by steam" there are still cranes driven by steam in Africa on the rail lines.
What we have seen here is RTO's (Registered Training organisations) get persons "their High Risk License" in a matter of days to operate a crane where I had to do 200 hours dual instruction from a licensed operator no less that 12 hours/week and no more than 40 hours/week then tested by an inspector both practically inclusive of whistle signals and the verbally going through a myriad of load charts for different cranes plus slinging of loads and working weights out that alone was a 3 hour verbal examination no notes allowed.
We're called "Operators" by our peers, we call ourselves "Lever Attendants" others are called "Drivers" whom have all the skill level of a one legged man in an egg & spoon race I have been present and watched cranes go over on construction sites due to "Driver" error its not pretty and fraught with extreme danger for people not even remotely near the machine check this pic of a Lampson Transi-lift crane and understand the ramifications if it went south during that lift.
For fineness of touch as we call it imagine being asked by your rigger when your in a tight space with (In my case 96 Meters of boom + Fly combo) to move a load 6 inches and what that equates to at your end so they get the amount at their end.......

But I guess that is the way things are now-days, an old Aussie WWII veteran who was a POW of the Germans said to me one day in the late '70's to emphasize the fact of change in society ~ "In days of old we had men of steel and buildings of wood. Today we have men of wood and buildings of steel."