Construction companies would like a word with you.

What, pray tell, qualifies a job as a "real" job?

I'd say something like people are actually willing to pay the average or even the worst job-doer something resembling a living wage.

If the stats from things like Patreon are to believed (and filtering out the "dead weight" of creators who don't post or have given up without closing their account) there's a serious "top 1% of creators make XX% of the revenue" problem.

Which means that for a small fraction, it's a job, for the vast majority it's a money-losing hobby.

Do you not believe working in retail or restaurants are real jobs? Because the vast majority of them are not paid a living wage in the US and have to rely on having multiple jobs or welfare. Walmart even teaches you how to sign up for welfare as an employee

Those are real jobs and should be paid a living wage or eliminated if that's entirely unfeasible. There can be arguments at the edges but I think people generally agree on that.

And even if you don't, certainly an "industry" where 99% of the people "employed" don't even make the poverty line or make back their expenses (patreon and only fans would fall here) wouldn't. (The people trying to 'make it big' are probably moonlighting as retail/restuarant anyway, just as all those who tried to make it in Hollywood did in years past).

There's certainly major abuses but the 1099 and "self employed" world is even more full of them than the W4 world.

By that definition, real jobs are doctor, dentist, and software developer. We don't pay the worst in most jobs anything more than the legal minimum.

Yeah, "adds value to the world," "works hard," and "pays well" are radically different metrics.

Oh, you know, Javascript Ninja, Devops Rockstar, a real job.

/s

It's not a real job because nobody will pay you for that because nobody gets value from that. You get paid by people = you provide value in the economic sense (do not always align with the moral or ethical sense, which might be the source of your dislike for the job).

And yet, the Hoover Dam was a job very well done.