My brother was a contractor too and could barely make it on that with no kids. He fairly recently became an engineer (not the software kind) and was stunned to learn that he could take days off and still get paid. He was also quite happy to have health insurance. There may not be a lack of workers, but there's one less who will ever go back because of the nature of the job.
SWE is a bubble and can't really be applied to the rest of the workforce. A SWE would scoff at any other job because of this.
We do have builders, there is overregulation that stops us from building.
It's not the lack of workers.