Grass is always greener and all that, but at least in high tax Europe and in poorer countries trades can be very well paid.
A whole lot of money can be earned under the table and it lets you work everywhere and under diverse conditions. Lots of people do short term work for a couple months, than vacation at home for a couple months, etc.. This is much more difficult to do in IT.
On my last flight back home I was talking to a guy doing roofing for some data centers in the Netherlands working for some dude from Sri Lanka. We calculated his theoretical salary and he could be making 80k+ euros cash a year assuming he worked normal yearly hours. He was working for a month or two, then chilling for 2-3 months, rinse and repeat. Sure, he's breaking his body, sure his retirement will be nonexistent since he's not paying taxes but he's literally on vacation more than half of the time and has been earning money since he became an adult without the broke student step.
I also have very close relatives with construction businesses and they're dying for skilled workers. It's very well paid if "you're not in construction because you can't do anything else" and they'd hire you for any period of time. Once approved you essentially call your boss the day before you want to work and he tells you where to go and what to do. You can work 7 days a week, you can work every second Saturday to get some movement in...
A whole lot of money can be earned under the table and it lets you work everywhere and under diverse conditions. Lots of people do short term work for a couple months, than vacation at home for a couple months, etc.. This is much more difficult to do in IT.
On my last flight back home I was talking to a guy doing roofing for some data centers in the Netherlands working for some dude from Sri Lanka. We calculated his theoretical salary and he could be making 80k+ euros cash a year assuming he worked normal yearly hours. He was working for a month or two, then chilling for 2-3 months, rinse and repeat. Sure, he's breaking his body, sure his retirement will be nonexistent since he's not paying taxes but he's literally on vacation more than half of the time and has been earning money since he became an adult without the broke student step.
I also have very close relatives with construction businesses and they're dying for skilled workers. It's very well paid if "you're not in construction because you can't do anything else" and they'd hire you for any period of time. Once approved you essentially call your boss the day before you want to work and he tells you where to go and what to do. You can work 7 days a week, you can work every second Saturday to get some movement in...