The thing is, it's not much of a livelihood or career - you can't do it all year, and it's very much only for the young and fit. And usually imported guest workers.
My first job was working in the Pear Sheds... growing up in an agricultural area, the factories that would sort the pears coming off of the orchards would often hire HS students during peak season. Thankfully since I was underage I only had to work 60 hours/week (10 hours/day, 6 days/week), standing since we couldn't sit down, staring at a convener belt of pears going by and throwing the blemished/bad ones onto two other convener belts. F'ing monotonous, 7am to 6pm.
It's several generations since my ancestors had to work a manual job, but my grandfather sent my dad to work on a mushroom farm for a summer, and in turn my dad told me I needed to find manual work for the summer when I was 18 if I expected any financial help from them during university.
I worked in a series of factories, mostly cleaning machines. None of the work was physically tiring — I think I was too useful to be given that work — but I at least met other people who'd probably be doing similar work for the rest of their career.
It doesn't really sound like a job I'd like to do, but I would imagine it compares favourably with the other jobs available for unskilled workers - supermarket checkouts, building site labourer, care assistant etc etc.
A lot of the new workers probably work in warehouses where they are basically a kind of more intelligent robot. I know a guy who worked in one and you can learn that job in a few days. It's harder to maintain the required pace for long though.
Working in a building site under sun and rain is not fun. And it is dangerous.
My father had a blast in a farm, because he is the boss and the manual work he has done is symbolic.
Swinging a machete (blade) under rain and sun for days on end is not fun, I can tell you from experience.
I only hear the opinion manual labor is "better" from some people who have never known any alternative, politicians who won't have to do any, or desk workers who can afford doing some manual "work" when feeling like it.
Any work you don't like will be tagged as bad, but I personally took the desk bad alternative over the manual labor alternative.
Manual labor is so bad that you have to import immigrants to do it. You could truly argue the wages are lower. I will elaborate realistic higher wages aren't enticing enough to get more nationals to embrace that work. That is happening in England right now, by the way.
Citation for "young": https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2004-06-10.175439.h : average age of guest workers issued permits was 22.
Broader discussion of fruit picking seasonal immigration (which mentions automation too): https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2016-11-30/debates/9F8...
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