We've been through this before. I don't have a solution, but the future is clear. When work is hard to find many electricians start out on their own. The abundance of electricians working out of their homes drives prices down and the companies with overhead like offices, secretaries and estimators can't find work and lay off even more electricians. The handy-men who do unlicensed electrical work because the market is good will be joined by handy-men who can't find enough fences to build. Wages will go down.
When this happened in the mid 1980's, I was a good union member and refused to take a pay cut that wasn't approved by the union. Then, I was an unemployed electrician who had a past employer who hated me and told prospective employers that I was a union trouble-maker. Finally, I was so broke that I couldn't afford the union dues. My employer paid the court-ordered settlement to the union lawyer and the money disappeared. I never saw a penny and the union office was closed to me.
The lesson I learned is to take the pay cut because it's every dog for himself. It'll be a few years before it gets better, but it gets better for those actually working as electricians, first. Finding a job after being out of the trade for a decade is next to impossible.
I hope I'm wrong. I really hated installing cable tv for flat rate. I'm with RH1 and I don't care what a kangaroo looks like. It can't be any uglier than a cable company. Sorry about the rant, but it still bothers me and I still refuse to watch cable tv.
