True Rate of Unemployment

"Additionally, people aren't stupid." Your example being, at least in my book, a counter example of your premise.

Working all summer on a concrete crew for cash seems like a good idea until an on-the job injury without workman's comp changes the way he walks for the rest of his life. Dealing weed doesn't have the profitability these days with legal dispensaries in many states and mandatory sentencing in the others. Running scrap is somewhat 'grand larceny adjacent', and again prone to an uninsured skill-saw event. Remember to wear eye protection when using a power tool.

So, returning to the two adults, two children exemplar household, it seems reasonable to expect that in general these people exhibit a lower incidence of these behaviours. If one or both of those children are still young enough to require round the clock supervision there is a significant limit on the couple's available working hours every week. That would make a similar 'hard to commit' to a higher paying full time job, for at least one parent.

I mean, the two kids really cut into the time flexibility necessary to participate in the grey-to-outright criminal economy, so I posit that people who report as earning the bottom quartile who also undergo the stringent documentation requirements necessary to receive benefits are more likely to be actually living on what they legally declare, than are somehow working, stealing benefits AND making substantially more through grift or crime.

I admit this may be my own biased observation, but the single 'smaht guy' with 22.5k household income and the criminal gig enterprise seems very unlikely to be filing a tax return or receiving any other support. So that case is interesting, but not very applicable in this equation: he's living on whatever he has this week or this month with very little long term benefit from earnings he cannot use to build a credit score, secure stable housing or invest in a future.

"would like" is pretty wild in this context. The number of individuals who have had a job they truly enjoyed is a rounding error in recorded history. I'll save us both the indignity of repeating tired boomer tropes around modern attitudes towards work.

In australia we have housing as an investment that pays off big. The more homes you own the richer youll be. Theres not much else here that pays off that well.

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That's a very complex result of the collapsing employment and skills market in the US of late, as viewed in miniature. My own situation being not much different, without the 'disposable income' factor. I was starting at a position with the potential to establish an investments portfolio layer for myself right when 2020 hit and hollowed out the global travel component that was the core of the new job. Being in that 'red flag' age has kept my household running on fumes ever since. But that's not an answer to the point.

I think for specific specialty work the focus might need to shift to a 'craftsmanship' approach, finding someone who doesn't actually advertise or propose to perform the work for hire, but who is similarly semi to fully retired and does the tasks you are needing as a hobby or one project at a time casual contractor.

There's not likely to be a shop 'fixing gadgets' in the retail mall anymore that has the actual skills necessary to satisfy your requirements, nor is there likely to be a 'mail us a gadget' and we'll fix it service that you can count on. But for the case of some gadgets, there might be a STEM club or class at one of your local schools with an instructor who is: 1 underpaid and underappreciated, 2 more likely to have some individual competency with a soldering iron AND flashing firmware, 3 in a proven position of trustworthiness having the public facing position of a classroom instructor ~ less likely to just rip you off and disappear.

Once upon a time I was a local PC repair store - there was me, a returns clerk and a series of part-time student interns - for about half of the Big Island, Hawai'i. I fielded gadget repair for a great number of strange things from digital projectors to hydrophones. The most satisfying of which was when a customer who was a retired biochemistry researcher asked me: "You don't happen to know how to repair the control circuitry for an electric kiln?" and my immediate response was, "If it's a Kress then sure." The look on her face, the smile as she practically hopped because it was a Kress was just a real kick. I guess the point im getting at is somehow find a way to make connections with people who are skilled in a variety of related and unrelated fields, and then ask what they can do that no-one might guess that they know. I have traded PC and other gadget repair for training towards a Coast Guard certification, for a sizeable amount of raw honey and later for beehive nucleus, and for a coolers full of fresh caught icy tuna. Sometimes the best work you might ever get could come in a trade for something that's more important and less impersonal than plain old cash.

As for how to find both ethical and effective niche skilled services in the continental US, today? Wow. I don't think that is in plentiful supply anymore.