Leg, I don't know how it went in your place but I know how it went here and in Vermont. The economical crisis stroke us in 2008. Six month later, the number of people fixing their car all by themselves had gone from 1 occasionally to 10 regularly. People who had not been in the field for their entire life have started growing their own food when they had a garden. People threw things away, they stopped and store things again ( although it might not last)
Myself, not having one single skill in fixing household machinery, I learned how to fix the washing machine (about 12 hours: 10 to understand how it works, 1.55 hours to understand what didn't work, 5 minutes to fix it (No choice, I had no money to fix it at the moment).
And I know by my friends living in Vermont that many people they knew and had lost their job returned to the land they owned and farm it.
Barter will develop also and skills will be traded as goods.
You forget about necessity and if its obvious that skills will be in short supply for whatever reason (dicease, radiations...) they will survive. In many areas, among limited population, you'll find plenty of skills. Some, of course, will jump at each other throats but other will collaborate (It is the bases behind Twilight). However, I would rather live in Queens than in the wealthy neighborhood of Manhattan.
You don't need engineering type skills to survive on a daily bases.
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