Also, IME, tradesmen always have the nicest houses regardless of income because they or someone they can trade with will do top quality work for barely any compensation.
Suvivorship bias?
I imagine that those that are still in the trades are managers/owners. Those that have blown out knees, but don't have the skills to manage/own/washed out a decade ago... Are not.
There's not enough room in the trades for every person who did work in their 20s to manage/own in the 40s, unless you have a lot of attrition.
Point is, for a time, we had access to some 0.1er% shit that’d I’d never get to utilize in my “office job” while my wife would trade for some truly spectacular experiences with the spouses of CEOs and CTOs. Heck, she’s half the reason I got the network I have these days. There’s something to be said about someone saying nice things about you to a captive audience :)
Definitely. There are a lot of young guys in the trades who no one should hire under any circumstances. They do drugs, drink, and even start fights on the job site. They get fired frequently and just move to the next job. There are so many of them that it makes for a toxic workplace for anyone getting into the trades.
That's a completely different issue from having injured your back or shoulder or knee so often that you need surgical corrections just so you can remain functional at a resting state.
A lot of the trades are hard on your body. By the time you are 45-50 your knees could be wrecked and that makes it hard to do service work like electric/HVAC.
There are an argument that desk work isnt healthy either but that is a different discussion.