From junk lugging to ‘poop scooping’: Gen Zers are earning thousands a month doing dirty but lucrative gigs

Many are proving that mindset right. Some of these Gen Zers are seeing some pretty hefty returns — even if it means getting dirt under their nails.

Junk lugging and poop scooping are lucrative gigs

Carter Grandbois — or @american.junkremoval on TikTok — was 16 years old and working for a junk-removal operator in Johnstown, Colorado, when a thick stack of cash in his boss’ truck console inspired him to start his own junk removal business. He went home from work that day, talked to his dad about what he saw, and within days, they bought a trailer, Fortune reported.

Grandbois told Fortune that his business, Carter’s Junk Away, brings in as much as $15,000 a month in peak season. But, he wasn’t able to reach this level of profitability until he created a pricing calculator and started tracking data. “After that, we were able to be profitable on every single job,” he told Fortune.

Junk lugging isn’t the only hands-on work young people are embracing to make their money. And workers, including Grandbois himself, use Jobber — a home-services software company — to make doing this work more streamlined. Just this year, the platform surpassed 100,000 customers and 400,000 service professionals using it daily.

Sam Pillar, the CEO and co-founder of Jobber, told Fortune that he thinks Gen Z is “frustrated” that “there aren’t as many opportunities to participate in the upsides of capitalism,” so they’re making it work through a platform like Jobber, doing what some might call grunt work.

One of Pillar’s favorite jobs he sees people doing is poop scooping, where people literally clean dog poop from people’s backyards for them, disposing it in their garbage. He cited it as “a very low barrier-to-entry opportunity,” adding that there are “million-dollar businesses” which “started just in that kind of a way.”

If you have a few simple supplies like a shovel and bags, even just walking around high-income neighborhoods and advertising your services door-to-door could get you a start on a lucrative business venture.

Could there be a blue-collar boom amongst Gen Z?

With young people making good money doing these hands-on jobs, it begs the question: will Gen Z start embracing more blue-collar work?

Blue-collar work is in demand, but advancing technology could become a barrier to entry as people require even more training to be equipped for the jobs. That being said, embracing hands-on work independently could lead you down the path to success, just like it did for Grandbois. If you’re committed and focus on the numbers, you might just be able to make a living, regardless of the smell.