America’s Ghost Legions of Idle Men

Intellectual Takeout ^ | October 18, 2018 | Michael Cook

[OddLane]

The US stock market continues to set new records. Unemployment continues to go down. The United States is now at or near “full employment”. According to a Bloomberg headline last year, “The Jobless Numbers Aren’t Just Good, They’re Great”.

But a closer look at economic data by demographer Nicholas Eberstadt reveals something else entirely. While “unemployment” has gone down, the work participation rate, and especially the male work rate, has been relentlessly declining for most of the post-War era and is now reaching a crisis with Depression-era levels.

In his new book, Men Without Work, Eberstadt describes this as a deep moral and social crisis which is passing almost unnoticed by politicians, pundits, business leaders and economists...

[Bon mots]

Actually, the Labor Force Participation Rate collapsed for the entirety of the Obama disaster and stopped falling immediately upon Trump’s inauguration.

You can see it for yourself here:

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

[litehaus]

I plead guilty...Ain’t drawn no paychecks since 1993....IDLE?

[hoosierham]

Being unable to pass a drug test keeps many from working unless they go into politics or crime.

[jarwulf]

What are you doing? Work your fingers to the bone so we can take it all to give to invaders and the wife you’ve been oppressing with your male privilege peon.

[Ouderkirk]

the exception is white middle-aged men.

We are the equivelent of No Irish need apply.

When you see the “self-identification” you know you’re screwed unless you’re a minority of one stripe or another.

[IWontSubmit]

Have it your way..... Bye ...

[proxy_user]

Many of them probably are active in some sort of money-making activity. Just because they don’t report anything to the government doesn’t mean they aren’t out doing some sort of work.

[Wiser now]

If healthy men are unemployed in this economy, it’s because they don’t want to be. Everybody is advertising job openings.

[ifinnegan]

Has the increase in female participation rate surpassed the decrease in male rate?

[IWontSubmit]

Two people I have known who seemed to me to possess beyond all others I knew this deep, confident, unswerving intimacy with the world about them.
One of them was a fellow, half gentleman and half vagabond, who had a strong aversion to work and a perpetual delight in hunting and fishing.
He was called shiftless and lazy and all that ; but I think most folks had a touch of respect for him, because he loafed so openly and unabashed.
As another man might go to his office or take his team to the fields, he shouldered his rifle or took his fishing rod and went his way, unashamed, indifferent to the gibes of those who toiled.
When he needed a little money, he might be persuaded to do a few days' work ; and he worked faithfully, but with an evident lack of joy in his tasks. It was to him an unpleasant matter made necessary by circumstances, but a sheer loss of time that might have been devoted to better things.
I have seen him sitting on a fallen log, his long-barreled squirrel rifle in his hand, waiting as still almost as a stump for the reappearance of a squirrel that had dodged into a hole ; and he seemed, from the placid patience with which he waited, to have no care of the lapsing hours.
I have seen him, too, on mysterious trips afield or through the woods when there was nothing to kill. It was in the woods and fields that he belonged; and whenever he could, there he went.
He might have been another Thoreau if he had had the ability of expression, but he was unlettered. I doubt, too, if in his calm detachment from what most people regard as the important things of life he would have thought it worth while to try to make these hurried, busy men understand the things that filled his heart.
So he lived and died, a shiftless, improvident fellow whose name was synonymous with indolence and worthlessness. Yet I have wondered if he was not worthy to be accounted a success, since his life evidently brought to himself no sense of failure; and he walked amid his fellows with unimpaired self-respect, for all his laziness, "a gentleman unafraid."
--FIELD-PATH AND HIGHWAY, By E. E. miller, 1912 , 'The Unchanging Love.'

[TheDon]

NILF?

No mention of a break down by race.

[BeauBo]

Men on Strike.

No respect, No work.

[jeannineinsd]

The article linked is dated October 18, 2016.

Nicholas Eberstadt published a book “Men Without Work” in September 2016. It was dealing with statistics from the Obama era. I would hope things have improved in the Trump era.

https://www.amazon.com/Men-Without-Work-Americas-Invisible-ebook/dp/B01LYILMQ0/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

[RinaseaofDs]

“If healthy men are unemployed in this economy, it’s because they don’t want to be. Everybody is advertising job openings.”

Yes, but you still have to be qualified, have to have recent experience, have to be young enough, etc.

You’ve bought into the perception. The data indicates that reality is different.

[Hugin]

Pre-Trump article.

[catnipman]

sooner or later the lack of qualified labor will force the labor marker to bring back older, experienced workers ... at least those who still need to and/or want to work ... i myself am quite content to live off of my accumulated wealth and work when and for whom i want to work for ...

[SoCal Pubbie]

I am sixty years old and have 38 years experience in my field. Back in 2008 I was employed full time and also still operating my business in the same field. I brought work into my employer’s shop. Then the crash happened and by this time in 2009 the company closed. I had big setbacks trying to get my wife’s ceiling business off the ground but it crashed too, and I was out of work and out of money.

I have applied for dozens of jobs all over the country. Had a few interviews but no offers. I had a good shot at a job recently but blew it due to not knowing the latest software version well enough. No one wants to do any kind of training. I’m resigned to rebuilding my business.

It is VERY hard for a white male over fifty to get a sniff of a good job today.

[phormer phrog phlyer]

There are jobs out there if someone wants to work.

[Secret Agent Man]

Its because they are all fine with white males not being around.