Posted on 12/22/2022 8:53:08 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Last week, CNN featured a story called "Men are dropping out of the workforce. Here's why" The article went on to tell us virtually nothing at all about why so many men are leaving the workforce. Although as many as seven million men have stayed out of the workforce for varying reasons, the CNN piece was really about how more women are joining the workforce, and how wonderful it is that more women are working in "male dominated" fields. The fact that more women are joining the workforce, however, tells us nothing about why men are leaving. Indeed, the CNN piece offered only one reason to answer why men are leaving the workforce: they're becoming stay-at-home dads.
That category, however, is fairly small and numbers only in the hundreds of thousands. That leaves us wondering why millions of men have left the workforce for reasons other than raising children. If we look deeper into the available information on the question, the reality appears to be a lot less rosy than CNN's suggested reason of "their wives are so doggone successful, these men decided to stay home and raise the kids."
Source: Census Bureau, Table SHP-1: Parents and Children in Stay-at-Home Parent Family Groups.
Instead, the reasons driving the lion's share of missing men to leave the workforce appear to be illness, drug addiction, a perceived lack of well-paying jobs, government welfare, and the decline of marriage. None of these are reasons to celebrate, and few of these reasons lend themselves to any quick fixes through changes in law or policy.
As I noted earlier this month, there are at least six million men of "prime age" (age 25-54) who are out of the workforce for various reasons. Historically, this number has been getting larger at a rate faster than growth of total men in that age group. That is, fewer than 3 percent of prime-age men were "not in the workforce" in the late 1970s, but 5.6 percent of men in this group were out of the labor force in 2022. That translates into approximately 7.1 million men according to the Census Bureau's count of men "not in labor force."
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
We could contrast this with the proportion of women who are not in the labor force. Fewer prime-age women today are out of the labor force than was the case in the late 1970s. Women tend to remain out of the labor force in much larger numbers of men, so we find that in 2022, the total number of women out of the labor force is approximately 15 million. That number is smaller than what was common in the late 1970's, however. As more women have joined the labor force over the past 40 years, more men have left.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Again, it is important to emphasize we are talking about prime age men here, and we're excluding older and younger populations in which retirement and schooling remove large numbers of workers from the workforce.
Even including only prime age men, however, Alan B. Kreuger notes that the workforce trend in the US is headed downward faster than other wealthy countries:
Although the labor force participation rate of prime age men has trended down in the United States and other economically advanced countries for many decades, by international standards the labor force participation rate of prime age men in the United States is notably low.
Determining reasons for leaving the labor force is not easy, as the data depends heavily on surveys and on extrapolation. According to the census bureau, however, number less than 250,000 men in recent years are outside the labor force in order to care for children full time. This is only a tiny fraction of the total number of parents who leave the labor force to be stay-at-home parents. That leaves more than six million men who have left the labor force for some other reason.
One thing is fairly clear: labor force participation is worse for men with less schooling. As Kreuger notes, labor force participation for prime age men has fallen for men at all education levels, "but by substantially more for those with a high school degree or less." Indeed, labor force participation has barely fallen for men with advanced degrees, but has gone into steep decline among high school dropouts and those with no college.
Source: Ariel J. Binder and John Bound, "The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men," Journal of Economic Perspectives 33, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 170.
Closely connected to this is the relative wage growth among these groups. While inflation-adjusted wages have increased significantly for men with college-level schooling or more, the same is certainly not true for men with "some college" or less. In these latter groups, earnings have stagnated since 1965, having risen throughout the mid 1970s, falling below the 1965 wage by 1995, and then slowly returning to 1960s levels. While this does not represent a sizable fall in wages in real terms since 1965, it is a large drop relative to the wages of men with more schooling.
Source: Ariel J. Binder and John Bound, "The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men," Journal of Economic Perspectives 33, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 165.
(Women, incidentally, have not seen nearly as large declines in wages based on levels of schooling.)
This growing earnings gap between men at various education levels has been blamed for driving the exit of so many men from the workforce. For example, in a report from the Boston Federal Reserve earlier this month, research Pinghui Wu concludes that relative decline in wages drives more men to leave the workforce than has the overall decline in real wages. Moreover, Wu ties the decline in relative wages to declines in "a worker’s social status." This effect is seen most strongly in non-Hispanic white men and younger men. Wu writes: "non-college-educated men are more likely to leave the labor force when the top earners in a state make disproportionately more than the other workers."
Falling social status has been tied to low job-satisfaction, disability, and higher mortality. All of this tends to lead to lower workforce participation. Moreover, men at lower education and lower wage levels tend to be more prone to workplace injury, given the nature of the work. Indeed, as Ariel Binder and John Bound have shown, men who have exited the labor force say they are frequently in pain, and take pain medication regularly. Men in this group who are over 45 years of age also tend to be more frequently eligible for government disability benefits. Binder and Bound suggest that the expansion of disability benefits in recent decades "could explain up to 25 percent of the rise in nonparticipation among 45–54 year-old high school graduates (without college)."
Wu, Binder, and Bound all also point to another important factor in falling male workforce participation: changes in marriage patterns.
Wu notes that men with lower social status fare more poorly in the marriage market, and that "marriage market sorting [a] potential channels through which relative earnings affect men’s labor force exit decisions." This would also help explain why declining social status also appears to especially affect younger men who are more likely to be active in pursuing a spouse.
Binder and Bound meanwhile note declining marriage rates are closely tied to workforce participation overall. This works in both directions: Declining incomes lead to declines in marriage. But unmarried men also have less incentive to actively seek employment. Marriage also may hamper a man's ability to draw income from existing relatives. Binder and Bound write:
As others have documented, family structure in the United States has changed dramatically since the 1960s, featuring a tremendous decline in the share of less educated men forming and maintaining stable marriages. We additionally show an increase in the share of less-educated men living with their parents or other relatives. Providing for a new family plausibly provides a man with incentives to engage in labor market activity: conversely, a reduction in the prospects of forming and maintaining a stable family removes an important labor supply incentive. At the same time, the possibility of drawing income support from existing relatives creates a feasible labor-force exit.
It's not just men with lower levels of schooling who marry less often, however. Marriage has indeed declined more for lower-income men than higher-income men. Declining marriage rates at the middle-class level and below, however, likely drive falling labor participation independent of wages. That is, "changing family structure shifts male labor supply incentives independently of labor market conditions" as unmarried men are simply less motivated to work."
The importance of relative wages points to the importance of economic factors in the decline of working men.
Enormous growth in government intervention in the twentieth century has led to a reversal of nineteenth century trends and led instead to capital consumption. It is notable that since the 1970s, savings and investment have declined, and Mihai Macovai notes " the real stock of capital per worker has grown in a clear and sustained manner only until the end-1970s and fell afterwards until the trough of the Great Recession." This has led to declining worker productivity and lower wages for many workers.
In more recent years, covid lockdowns impacted lower-income workers the most, and lockdowns are likely to raise overall mortality among these workers, as well, even years after the lockdowns ended. Unemployment and intermittent employment is tied to higher mortality rates and disability in both the medium and long terms.
Finally, a powerful factor is the central bank's monetary policy which has been linked to a rising gap between higher-income workers and lower-income ones. Easy-money policy has been especially damaging to wealth-building for lower-income groups, as Karen Petrou notes in her book Engine of Inequality:
Ultra-low [interest] rates fundamentally eviscerated the ability of all but the wealthy to gain an economic toehold; instead they lead investors to drive up equity and other asset prices to achieve their return … but average Americans hold little, if any, stock or investment instruments. Instead, they save what they can in bank accounts. The rates on these have been so low for so long that these thrifty, prudent households have in fact set themselves back with each dollar they save. Pension funds are just as hard-hit meaning not only that average Americans can't save for the future, but also that the instruments on which they count for additional security are unlikely to meet their needs.
But not all can be blamed on economic policy. The importance of marriage as a factor in workforce participation illustrates that some aspects of declining workforce participation lie beyond mere economics. Marriage rates for the middle class have continued to fall even in periods when median wages have increased—such as the 1990s. These trends are tied to changes in ideology, religious observance, and a host of social factors. Other factors such as rising drug addiction and obesity affect workforce participation as they are tied to disability and poor health, often at elevated rates among lower-income workers.
In other words, government policy certainly plays a sizable role in declining male workforce participation, but changing American culture cannot be ignored.
Thats a BINGO.
Par for the course!
This article, in contrast, provides loads of specific info!
Regards,
Women and feminists also put it in place.
I have decided to leave the workforce. Not because of this article: I had already resolved to leave. I’m good at my job. But I’m almost 71 years old and I think I can afford to be unemployed.
I think social rather than economic factors are responsible for a lot of this. Everybody - including women - was happier when people got married in their early to mid 20s and more women were homemakers. Men were more motivated to work. Women were happier according to opinion surveys, and the birthrate was at a sustainable level.
Just speaking from personal acquaintances: Many excellent, disciplined, God-fearing, Republican-voting young men who are defending their country now in elite units, and putting themselves in position to become high-ranking officers later.
When conservatives regain power, I know who I will prefer to be directing the point of the spear.
Without retaining and growing a presence in the military, I don't see how normal society has a chance of throwing off (and eliminating) the plague of political schemers and saboteurs. Historically, the nature of rank-and-file officers has proved critical to the outcome of many social struggles.
Because government handouts reduce the value of marginal effort. IOW, you won't make much more at minimum wage than you would if you were on the dole.
To be fair to men, many of them are simply not able to achieve what your son-in-law and your potential son-in-law achieved, for myriad reasons. A lot of men are not graced with the talent, ability, or intellect needed to reach such lofty heights; some just lack the social or economic support required to move ahead in life. For example, I’m sure your son-in-laws come from great or at least stable families- not everyone is blessed with a stable family.
As another poster mentioned, Jordan Peterson has covered this topic extensively.
Women tend to marry across and up the socioeconomic spectrum. If they are unable find a partner who earns as much or more than they do, they won’t settle -nor should they- and will remain single.
This dwindles the supply of suitable women available for the average man. What are these involuntarily single men to do?
Either shack up with a semi-toothless slut or stay home and watch porn the whole day.
Gee, so private central bank policy has much to do with men quitting. That makes it purposely planned.
Here is a great video about the scurge of a private central bank and the Federal Reserve, despite its name, IS a private central bank.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BrKf9nYeXT0&t=2150s&pp=2AHmEJACAQ%3D%3D
Congratulations on being able to not work. I trust I am right behind you.
Best post of the day. Thanks for speaking the truth and Going Galt!
Good post and I think you are right about your daughters but if women do not have children, than that mostly wipes out any goodness they bring to the world. Based upon what you wrote, between the two of them, they only have one child.
This is a truism that I never realizes until much later in life. If we do not propagate our way of life with children, then we are ultimately poor caretakers of that way of life.
who is voluntarily joining the military?
Single moms,-weirdos looking for free medical s they can become “women”, people that need to get away from home for 2-4 years so the guy they owe $$ to can’t find them.
Nobody who is actually ready to fight though.
no doubt
I retired last year at 58 because of the vax mandates. No way I was taking that thing just because some corporate petty tyrants told me to, and by suddenly acting like petty tyrants they demolished any sense of trust I previously had in them. I suspect many felt the same sense of betrayal that I did.
I was also just tired of the rapidly growing corporate “woke” nonsense, and of the robotic group think dynamic that drives every large organization now. Watching former colleagues continue to try to outdo each other with their buzzword-filled posts on LinkedIn now is both amusing and pathetic. It’s all so phony and superficial.
I am happier now than I’ve been in years, and I don’t regret my decision for a second.
From the names I see mostly non citizens from south America eastern Europe and Africa. They will be used to kill Americans.
Don’t assume the men in question are lazy or addicts; could you provide a list of reasons as to why these men should do anything differently? The goal of providing for a family that has become increasingly fragile doesn’t appeal to them, they don’t want to work for low wages, and they know they are culturally despised.
A lot of the pressure on these men is now coming from women watching their eggs dry up while they put costumes on their cats/dogs; tough sh!t. Reap what you sow.
(I say this as a married father of young working adult sons who may never see grandchildren but expect to see happy sons.)
Who is joining the military?
From the names I see mostly non citizens from south America eastern Europe and Africa. They will be used to kill Americans.
I don’t see a pathway to a conservative government ever.
I wonder how the decline in male workforce participation tracks with the decline in the US economy vis-a-vis the world. There are certain occupations for which one HAS to show up. To name just a few, there are construction, plumbing, healthcare, anybody who touches a product. With the exception of the last one, all are male dominated.
Women used to use their 20's to actively seek out a suitable husband. This gave men an incentive to be seen as suitable, by having a good job and good career prospects.
Increasing numbers of young women are spending their 20s partying around with men who are desirable but have no interest in marriage, while ignoring the average men.
Men who do not have women in their lives are more likely to turn to drugs.
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