The Missing Men

The Atlantic ^ | June 27, 2016 | Derek Thompson

[2ndDivisionVet]

Millions of men in the prime of their lives are missing from the labor force. Could a big U.S. housing construction project bring them back?

Something is rotten in the U.S. economy. Poor men without a college degree are disappearing from the labor force. The share of prime-age men (ages 25-54) who are neither working nor looking for work has doubled since the 1970s.

The U.S.’s labor participation rate for this group of men is lower than every country in the OECD except for Israel (an outlier, because of the high number of non-working Orthodox Jewish men) and Italy (an economic omnishambles). Today, one in six prime-age men in America are either unemployed or out of the workforce altogether—about 10 million men.

So, this is the 10-million-man question: Where did all these guys go?

According to a report from White House economists released last week, non-working prime-age men skew young, are less likely to be parents, are disproportionately black and less educated, and are concentrated in the South.

In the last few years, several writers and economists have suggested that many of them are in school, on disability, or in prison. More optimistically, some said that men are more likely to help their spouses with raising children and cleaning the house. But upon investigation, none of these answers fully explains the disappearance of prime-age men....

[knarf]

all of the above

I've been stating this for at least three or four years

I live in the Pittsburgh area (not a native) and to drive past the parking lots growing weeds ... that were designed to hold 6 or 7 hundred cars (a guess) ... is a sad experience

Idle and perhaps crumbling buildings that were centered around the steel industry

If I could wave a magic wand and put all those properties and industries back in working order, our unemployment rate would be half of one percent

[faithhopecharity]

what is missing are the jobs,

if we can recover from Obama’s destruction of the American economy, some jobs will become available

and then you will see some of the millions of unemployed people back in the labor force

you can’t be in the labor force if there are no jobs for you

[Pelham]

“But behind all of these trends, there is a larger story: the decline of sectors dominated by male workers. In 1954, the highwater mark for male participation, the manufacturing and construction sectors accounted for nearly 40 percent of all jobs. Now, after the long decline of manufacturing and the end of the housing bubble, they account for just 13 percent. These are jobs that men without a college degree can count on, and they’re much rarer than they used to be. “

[dila813]

Many working under the table where they aren’t taxed and don’t have to subsidize others health care.