pick and shovel

Pick and shovel names the basic hand tools for breaking and moving earth—the pick loosens hard ground, the shovel removes it.

The phrase often modifies other nouns to suggest fundamental, labor-intensive work: pick-and-shovel jobs, pick-and-shovel research.

During gold rushes, merchants selling picks and shovels to miners often profited more reliably than the miners themselves, giving rise to the investment strategy of backing suppliers rather than speculators.