Physical labor is very different from white collar work.
Would be curious if there’s a study that compares “health nut” physical trade workers with “health nut” office workers.
Still as you said, there’s a lot of risk with relying on physical capabilities for work.
If an office worker gets injured outside of work, you can still do the basic job.
If a physical tradeworker gets injured outside of work, you could be out of a paycheck.
For example, we cannot yet google the software eng retirement age or the like. Assuming we started in 2005, average dude 25years old then hasn't retired yet and we don't know either where he/she's gone in 2035/45.
There are plenty of retired software engineers that I know. Most of them retired because they wanted to do something different, and they had the money to do it. I don't know of any that have retired as a direct result of the physical effects on their body.
https://breathefreely.org.uk/guidance-on-exposure-to-mangene...
>The WEL for Manganese (since 2018) in the UK for those small particles that reach the deep lung (known as respirable particles) is 0.05mg/m3 (8hr TWA), a tenth of the previous WEL.
This change is significant as much of the manganese in the fume will be respirable. It is likely that the respirable limit will be exceeded during many welding activities unless effective controls are introduced and used properly.
If you can do that successfully, you can get FAANG money.
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472152.htm https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-busi...
Both jobs drained my will to live though. The mailman job was actually much nicer, just the pay was total ass.