Some people want to break out of the cycle, and you can't really blame them for it when the economy is hurting working people (ofcourse excluding that writing software is relative to other jobs a cushion job)
Software is the most cush job I have had. More money for less work. Better perks. Less stress overall. Constantly learning, yes. Often frustrating, yes. But having financial resources beyond what the other jobs could provide is a thing. Other jobs I could leave at work, sure, but others I couldn't. I would never go back to being a public high school teacher; that shit was the suck. So was selling stocks. Software is a dream in comparison.
I've been an EMT, a line cook, a dishwasher, a waiter, sold insurance, and worked on political campaigns. The easiest of all those is 10x harder than the hardest day of writing code.
It's frustrating at times, sure. There's office politics, sure. We probably have to deal with a disproportionate percentage of weaponized autism, sure.
But it is a cushy job and the "money per unit of effort" metric is off the charts compared to basically every other job I can think of, and definitely every other job I've ever had.
Eventually he tried out programming and found there's no real end to the amount of things to learn. It was the only job he found that he wouldn't get bored on. He only eventually left because of bad bosses.
I think that might be the factor that makes it hard vs easy compared to others - that for a lot of people, continual learning (which they thought they'd left behind when they finished school) is why it might be harder than the other jobs ones you listed. Though I know I'd find those ones harder for other different reasons.