Indeed, "identity tied to a particular occupation" is evil. You are not same thing as the way you manipulate the world into wiring money to you.

And some people still ask kids "who do you want to become when you grow up?"

man this article sucks. the NPR article inside of it that they reference does a far better job explaining

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/04/1133586707/boys-men-labor-for...

> The big shift in the labor market has been away from the kinds of jobs which could be done largely through physical strength, and/or with relatively low levels of education. Stereotypically, the guy with maybe a high school diploma could come out and get a pretty good union job in a factory. And those jobs are just becoming scarcer and scarcer because of these changes in the economy.