This is just really highly subjective. The US is a huge outlier since your social safety net sucks ass. Your life literally depends of your employer giving you health insurance but the rest of the world is also not that much better.

With the end of the udssr capitalism lost all motivation to proof that it can give workers a better life than communism so it started to become what it was destined to.

A 9-5 regardless of sector was guaranteed to give you a life worth living, your own house, sending your kids to college, a good pension, enough food and some luxeries. Helping the company succeed directly benefitted the worker and the worker could also often be PROUD of what they made collectivly. (obviously not true for all of human history, and we can obviously discuss the ethics of any production across time but true enough for this discussion and the time 9-5 started to be a thing)

Now all the money is going to the top, while you can still have a decent life in some sectors it is much harder. The dream of owning your home is out of reach for many, it feels like just surviving and not living. There is zero loyalty towards workers.

So a 9-5 today means giving away your lifetime to a heartless coporation doing shit that benefits no one and still die off a preventable diseas in your 2000 dollar roach infested apartment OR you can do odd jobs with less "security" and at least live your life before you meet the same end.

There are a lot of jobs you can do though that pay good enough money and are still flexible where you don't feed the orphan crushing machine too much and are almost always in demand. You can work and travel, work in the event sector, hospitality or do something in the art sector. I know people managing weed farms getting high every day, traveling yoga teachers, artists who do odd jobs on the side or people who build their own small businesses where they don't have to work that much anymore and so on and so forth. But it shouldn't be on us to find meaningful work, the economy should work for us not the other way around.