Technical skills are not undervalued. The people struggling are those without such skills: unskilled workers and non STEM students. You are glossing over serious problems that are a big weight on our economy.
Kids who don't belong in college, and would be better off learning a trade, are taking on enormous debt. Many don't graduate or have economically worthless degrees. Employers require college degrees because they've been thoroughly debased by Federal Debt Sponsored oversupply. This debt has also driven education inflation far beyond that of the broader economy (much like Health Care, another heavily controlled by the Feds sector).
What I mean when I say that technical skills are undervalued is that we as a general society have largely abandoned technical training as a valuable means of educating a productive workforce. Technical education has largely evaporated from high schools. Many employers would prefer a useless degree over someone who has received technical training that would equip them for a specific area of usefulness. In my industry particularly I see it quite often. The hotel and lodging industry is set for great growth over the next couple decades. Yes, there are some positions where a professional degree is useful. But there are also many positions where such a degree is not at all necessary. I don't need someone with a four year degree to be my new Front Desk Agent. Rarely is it really necessary for someone to possess such a degree in order to be a department manager in the industry. But most companies in the industry view the idea of a college degree as mystical. I have a pipe dream that some day I might be able to create a vocational school that would teach people how to fill basic roles in the industry, and prepare them with the necessary skills that would make it possible to have a career with upward mobility at least to the department manager level in Front Office, Housekeeping, Engineering, and F&B areas at high rated, full service, mid sized properties.
Cheaper, faster education, able to fill a sizable market need, without the complications for students that aren't college "material." But nobody wants something like that.
As regards wage stagnation, thank lack of valuable skills combined with regulations that make employees more expensive.
The effect of regulations on wage stagnation is debatable. As for lack of skills, that's nearly impossible to suggest. When the same jobs have had stagnant wages while employing the same skill sets, or greater skill sets, the cause of the stagnation lies elsewhere. Stagnation is due to a variety of things coming together. The biggest contributing factors are ballooning income inequality amongst the highest levels (which are effectively siphoning off wage growth for the lower levels), which are related to shifting social values and forces.
And Income Inequality - blah blah blah. If the economy were growing, there would be more opportunity for everyone who is motivated to better his lot in life.
This is always a ridiculous argument. Desire does not automatically generate opportunity. Why anyone ever makes this suggestion is beyond me. It doesn't matter how much I might desire to sleep with Emma Stone, it's not going to happen, there's never going to be an opportunity for it to happen. Desire does not create opportunity, it merely motivates people to pursue opportunities that are discovered.
Therefore, the actual creation of opportunity is what needs to happen. Your premise that a growing economy necessarily leads to the creation of opportunity is fundamentally flawed, and ultimately false. The economy has been growing for quite some time. Yet opportunity creation has remained minimal.
As I said previously, your perspective on the modern day economy is based on an outdated view of things. The economy today does not operate with the same form and flow of yesteryear. Indicators that used to imply one thing no longer are reliable means by which to infer the same things. Different trends and behavior patterns among the public are leading to different sets of influences. Remember, economics is ultimately about human behavior.
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