Absolutely. If a driver is at fault in an accident, Walmart will get sued for $zillions.
I once knew a middle aged man laying tile. I asked him why was he laying tile for crap wages. He said he lost his trucking license because he had a DUI (not while trucking). Doing construction was the only job he could get. He was quite bitter about it.
Source: https://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/dmv/shared/cdl-disq.pdf
Even the lower rate such as concrete laborers wanted 100+ an hour.
I suspect the low pay of many of these trades is just a symptom of housing and construction being the number one money laundering industry and thus tradesman are always saying they're making nothing while simultaneously asking 100+ an hour cash and working full weeks.
Id bet the BLS income reports are off by like 50+%.
It's not too hard to get cash-only "customers" to buy services you don't have to actually perform.
It's also pretty easy to write two invoices, feign a mixup, and skim some off the top of a payment.
I agree that in my experience a lot of contractors would rather deal with cash and it isn’t exactly a secret why. I got a significant all cash discount on a new roof.