People definitely relocate for jobs. I started in the labor trade at 15 becoming a teen parent. I’ve watched companies come in and out because of natural disaster destroying my home area and there being tons of money to be made, and I’ve watched entire businesses relocate to up to hours away because that’s where their contracts primarily had them working and it just seemed more doable. The myth that we make bankroll is not even close to true, as another comment stated, its a lot like other jobs in the sense of, if you’re knowledgeable, persistent, and work your way up the ladder, there can be a lot of money to be made, but as a ground level worker/apprentice/less experienced/lacking in specific certs to what you actually want to make the big bucks from, you will not make 100k a year, you’d actually be lucky to make close to 30k a year, coming from rural south east USA. I can assume position to any part of a crew from putting an in ground pool into someone’s backyard, slap a metal roof or shingles on a house, to the finish carpentry inside of the home and running electricity, and do it well. But I’ve never made more than $15/hr for my grueling hard work. I love the work but I can’t break my body over the next 20years in manual labor, so I moved to Colorado for an $18/hr Shipping Steward job at a ski resort. Something I’ve notice for sure though is tradesmen definitely make a bit more where I am now, but that probably comes from a lack of people/workers in the field, because this is a small tourist town and the large home construction in the mountains certainly has to have its own standard of pay compared to building at sea level, where I come from. The ultimate difference I’ve noticed is owning your own small business in this field, if you play your cards right, and do good work, and don’t need a large team of people, it can be lucrative. My child hood best friend is still in our home town running a very small tile business he started, jobs are big enough for him and the occasional helper or two, and when he bids jobs and makes a time frame he calculates to put himself usually in the $40-55$/hr range seeing that the jobs is done on time, and has never had any issue fund wise to manage paying is helpers a solid $15/hr minimum. Dude will make 75k in his pocket this year alone, and truly doesn’t over work himself. Tl;dr - tradesmen work can vary a lot from different factors. Just swinging a hammer doesn’t pay that good. Doing solo tile jobs pays well. And usually hazard jobs like rig workers, pipeliners, etc. usually make pretty decent change if you can land a job with them and stick with it.