Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, my hearing is shot too. My spouse is always having to say things louder and slower to me. Not a lot of fun for them to do. I also can't smell certain smells; I suppose this is due to the aforementioned brake cleaners (spray acetone really), but am not very sure.

Totally depends on the trade. Concrete foundations, roofing, anything that uses a wheelbarrow, etc. will eventually break you. Maybe an electrician, plumber, carpenter can weigh in, but digging post holes or hauling shingles up a ladder is not the same beating as hanging cabinets, or wiring circuit breakers. Just saying there are different kinds of hard.

>Maybe an electrician, plumber, carpenter can weigh in

Those trades mostly pay their dues when they are younger and then the next batch of journeymen and apprentices take over that part of the job as they move up into the less physically demanding parts of the job. Even fairly physical jobs like bricklaying, they'll have the older dude doing nothing but slapping the bricks in place, they get carried over to him by one guy, one guy is mixing up the mortar, one guy is unloading the truck, another is touching up the joints, etc. It's one of those things that explains why union jobs have so many extra people too. It's not one dude doing everything, it's 3 guys doing different parts of the job and learning how to do the next part.

For this reason, maybe a handyman / jack-of-all-trades will have less wear and tear on their body? Diversity in tasks could mean a week of concrete followed by a week of cabinets, then a day or two of building a staircase, three hours of adding a new receptacle, and then two days of painting? Although in some ways, a handyman's job might be harder - they should be a quick learner, have good support / contacts in specific trades, and it might require better/more marketing to get customers.

Those are vanishingly small jobs these days in the US at least. Most companies and guys will specialize in electrical or drywall or something as they become faster at it and time is money in the trades. These skilled jobs typically require more than a single truck's worth of equipment to do quickly.

Like, tying rebar is really hard to do by hand, but they make a gun that will do it for you in seconds: https://amsalesinc.com/products/rebar-tying-gun-makita-xrt01... . You can do a whole pad of concrete in an hour that would take you days otherwise. But that gun is thousands of dollars (supply and demand baby). So having a truck of these time saving gadgets for a bunch of job types isn't feasible. Hence the specialization.

Unless you live in a remarkably remote area, rental yards carry pretty much everything you can need. I've even rented $100,000 excavators I needed for a day quite easily, and it eats into the value of your labor maybe 20-30% at worst.

I mean, not a lot of handymen are able to eat 20%; that a pretty big cost.

Apparently you are not a homeowner--as they have large numbers of these small jobs.

Oh, I very much have a lot of these jobs at the house. It's just that I tend to call a specialist [0] as the handy men around me tend to, well, not really exist anymore. Besides, most of the smaller things that don't require the really tall ladders, I can do myself.

[0] who then never shows up on time and charges too much. But that's a whole nother story about where I live...

It's all degrees of hard on your body.

Roofing might be relatively worse than electrical, but both are definitely harder than sitting an air-conditioned desk.

but there's something to be said about doing something with your hands and going to bed physically tired...

your other option is mentally drained, potentially depressed, probably anxious - especially if/when something breaks on you

i went with the desk job, yearn for something else.. would rather have become a machinist or welder looking back. do both as hobbies now to clear the head from the desk job

That’s the thing though… a desk job often affords you the time and income to pursue those other things as hobbies. The reverse is less often true.

The plumbers that just fixed my slab leak were getting IT certifications because their knees and lower backs are shot. Labor fucks you up.