Doing one-off projects on your own home is not equivalent to being a full time roofer or tile-layer, or even plumber or auto tech where you are constantly working on your back, hands, and knees.
I have my own home too and the times I’ve done my own plumbing work were hard. And that’s one of the physically-speaking easier jobs, never mind Roofing, I wouldn’t last a week.
My uncles a roofer and did it into his 40s but eventually started his own company when he wanted to stop carrying slate around on roofs in the miserable British winters. I think that's the usual progression - you're not literally laying tiles till you're 67.
It's like a MLM spread across generations of workers. You recruit two workers and they recruit two workers each and then they recruit two workers each.... You even get to be your own {Personal Pronoun}Boss!
If you spend 2/3 of your career as one of the 2 underlings it's not MLM. Body is dunzo by say 50 for trades, which means you get 30 years as a tradesman and 15 years employing two tradesman. Retire at 65.
Or there's an increase in new buildings, or the number of buildings needing repairs increase over time, etc... With trades the number of self-employed or owners is quite high - you can either do Job A by yourself for $X for company Foo, or be self-employed and do Job A by yourself for $X++. Same number of jobs exist, just less monopolized by larger companies. I don't know why, but this is what I found in the south-west of England when I lived there. I think the experienced people tend to start those orgs to charge more then get older and need to hire apprentices to do the work for them, and so the cycle continues.
No, but supervising/managing is pretty viable. Also these aren’t FTSE100 companies, these are small groups of like 3/4 people who spin off and have a few commercial clients.
But not everyone in that business can build their own company unless every single one is an individual contractor. What about the other 80% of those trade workers who are laying tiles until retirement or their body fails them?
I have my own home too and the times I’ve done my own plumbing work were hard. And that’s one of the physically-speaking easier jobs, never mind Roofing, I wouldn’t last a week.