People with it easy: 2.5x median and working in an office, which includes programmers
People with it hard: making little and doing backbreaking labor
People with it medium: everyone else
So we shouldn't say people in the easy category are struggling, and for perspective we should think about people in the hard category. But we can't say one way or the other about people in the medium category.
I wouldn't say programmers have exceptionally high mental discomfort; we certainly don't have high physical discomfort. And we're well compensated, relatively speaking.
In contrast, we have oil field workers(?): uncomfortable physical and mental work, but well compensated. Or meat processors: uncomfortable physical and mental work, poorly compensated.
By that metric, it seems like we're doing pretty well.
We'd also have to exclude all the workers that aren't in abusive conditions, like self owned artisan shops, plumbers etc. And exclude gig economy workers who don't literally work themselves to death and only work "a lot" for little pay.
You might be right, but the slice left is so small I am not sure it's a useful distinction in most conversations. Perhaps qualifying ditch digging and coal mining as "extreme working" and "hardcore struggling" would be a better fit.