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.
Maggie Gallagher once observed: When women enter a field it loses prestige.
what is needed is valued. what is mot needed is not valued.
husband is not needed. the dildo
share in raising the children is not needed. gov paid childcare is now a right.
breadwinner is not needed. if not a job, yang's ubi renamed covid relief and phe.
Yep...I interviewed for a job where I knew I was highly qualified, nailed the interview, received excellent feedback - only to see the opening reposted via a staffing company called the ‘Professional Diversity Network’. They wanted a DEI hire. If I was a black female I’d have been hired before ending the interview.
This is rampant now.
“Leaving the workforce?” They are kicked out. Colleges graduate more females than males. Men are denied jobs in favor of women. Men at work are accused of harassment. Men are denied promotions.
Unless they are “trans men”, but then they are not men.
Fixed it.
I just started a new job. Fairly small company <60 employees yet they have an HR dept. You get an interview, get drug tested on site, get an appointment for a physical then go back in for four hours of orientation and have to watch 4 hours worth of stupid movies and slide presentations. Fill out a test on that info which includes harassment bs etc. Background check too of course. All for a shop job. Then you get a card plus program two machines with your index finger prints to get in and out of doors. As the song says, I feel like a number. #2270 to be specific.
Three trips spread out over two months and a total of 10 hours to get this blue collar job.
30-40 years ago, I’d walk into a place and ask if they needed help. They ask if I could read a tape measure and maybe weld etc. I’d say yes. They’d say; “When can you start?”
Most involved it would be is I ask if they need help, they hand me an app, I fill it out and I’d get to see someone right away for a 1/2 hour interview and at the end; “When can you start?”
With this new job, like all these days that have HR, there’s a 50 page company policy book. 30, 60, 90 day reviews where I’m sure they’ll list off all the data points they’re collecting. With the nasty weather, they closed down production the day before yesterday but Maintenance still got to work yesterday. Head of Maint basically told me not to come in because I have so far to drive. I bet that day off will be used against me though on my 30 day review.
There’s at least one gay guy working there and a few women. Can’t make a comment or look at any of them for too long or the wrong way, with no definition as to what that means. There’s guys walking around like zombies or robots because they’re afraid to look at or speak to anyone.
Place I worked at for 4-5 months 10 years ago also had an HR dept and utilized it to keep a flexible work force. Same size company, strict attendance rules, 50 page company policy. CEO would walk around with a clipboard held close to his chest, stop and watch you and take a few notes. You’d ask a direct supervisor for a day off or let them know you needed to be late or leave early and they’d give you permission every time. “I don’t have a problem with it” was the term they used. They would extend your probationary period indefinitely with no real reason given. Then coming up on Christmas, they’d call 20-30 people up to HR one at a time and fire them. It was an annual affair and the HR lady could care less if you had permission from a shop supervisor, who were all the son in laws of the CEO.
That CEO was deathly afraid of people Unionizing so the company also played depts against each other. They had a bonus system that was based on dept performance so only one dept got the bonus. Sometimes it would be obvious that one dept had a heavy workload and got it all done yet some other dept would get the bonus.
In the past, I worked at a lot of places where we had fun and produced a lot of work. Now everyone’s scared or pissed off due to companies playing data or head games with everyone. Most companies are top heavy now too because of the extraneous bs system they have to run. Aside from the 50 page policy manual, I had to read and sign off on having read another 50 pages at this current job. More data points they can track.
I’m making $2.00 more an hour than I did 15-20 years ago.
I’m working on multi-million dollar machines and started out at $2.00 more per hour than the fast food places start at. That’s the going rate for all the factory jobs around here.
So yeah, pardon the language but a lot of guys are saying fuck that shit. There’s not much feeling of self worth working for a company these days.
I’m 72 and working full time or in school full time since I was 15 and intend to continue for a few more years, assuming my health holds out. I had a neighbor who was laid off in his late forties. He drove an Uber and went back to school. He now has a full time job.
Place I just started at has a sheet of paper taped up over the computer/timeclock extolling the virtues of Moderna and Pfizer and all “the science” behind them. The incoming HR guy couldn’t help but spit out how he and his wife put thought into it and decided to get the jab. Weeks later, he had a heart attack brought on by myocarditis. Then he said “I shouldn’t even be talking about this because it’s political”.
The outgoing HR guy had already said no politics “Because for every Trump supporter, I can find someone who hates Trump”. (You know, that guy who’s not even in office anymore)
So this incoming HR guy is afraid to talk about his heart attack because “it’s political”. If it were me, I would rip that damn sheet of paper off the wall.
I plan to work there as long as I can, save up money and go self employed. BTDT and can do it again. See my post above about how insane every small company is now with this HR bs.
It’s the same thing applied to marriage, as boomers tell millennials: “Just walk in and apply for the job with a firm handshake; I paid MY way through college working part time, so can you. And then buy a house.”
Women are already naturally hypergamous; but the leftist programming in addition to social media have made every 5 decide she is worth only a 9 or 10.
And the sexual revolution has removed women from slut-shaming other women, to the result most of them sleep around until they hit the wall; then marry a man at the level they deserve, but despise him, and are unable to bond because of past promis cuity; and then divorce him, serving as a warning to other men.
I think you would be going full Galt in saying that. And as I recall, the Communist Party members I knew in America in the 1960s also took that same line about our men. And by the way, would you say the same thing about my father, who served in World War II in the Army Air Corps under FDR--a President little concerned about the Constitution, whose Dept. of State included Communist agents?
To make that assertion you would need to investigate, for example, whether 1) our country is not worthy of any physical protection at any level, even to repel an alien invader attacking our civilian population, and should not have any defense at all, including little kids with pea-shooters; 2) whether all our officers, including the home-schooled, traditionally raised, conservative Catholic kids I'm describing, who grew up saying the Pledge of Allegiance, would obey an unlawful order--such as shooting unarmed American civilians engaged in lawful protest against our government.
From the many examples I know, who include Green Berets and Marines, I've talked politics with them over the years, and unless they're delusional or lying, the answer would be no. In fact, their own parents would hold them accountable.
You made some good points but a couple of observations.
Many 4 to 7 SMV women are holding out for 8 or 9 SMV en. It isn’t going to happen. When they reach 30 to 35, they start to lower expectations but are never really happy with their options. What guy wants to marry into that?
Family and criminal courts are heavily stacked against men. I can see why many minimizing one’s exposure.
Many young, single men are not lazy, drug addicts but have instead chosen to pursue their own interests and perhaps work off the grid.
Right now every member of the armed forces is supporting facsism AND THEY KNOW IT. They know I know they know it. They are not defending the Constitution but their little retirement schemes.
But do they know that they know that they know it?
Sometimes, they're really out to get you, I agree. But sometimes, you have the wrong guy. . . And you're half a bubble off.
Ex Naval Officer here. I had a enlisted Marine E-5 tell me the official “party line” about recruiting. I watched him grow up, a neighbors kid. I asked him why is recruitng is so bad right now?? He agreed it is bad. Instead of trashing the WOKE military “leadership”, the fake elections, tearing down statues and the general trashing of America we have going on now and how that is the real cause of the recruiting and retention failure, he spouted off how all of a sudden American youth are to fat and lazy. All of a sudden. Like overnight, like a light switch. I asked him if he really believed that BS? He said he did, just like a good little fascist thug. He is either brain washed or a facist now. I won’t talk to him any more. Siemper F-Off.
Yep. At 61, I find myself to be an anachronism around my office of 40 or so professionals. No more good-natured ribbing, no more practical jokes, no more genuine commraderie, no more “Dammit ______! Get with the program!!!” We used to have fun. We used to produce consistently excellent work. We used to rally for each other in times of need or crisis. We used to go on weekend trips together. We used to respect knowledge and experience over technology. No more.
So the homeless guys strung out on drugs are just victims of the gynosociety, right? Women held a gun to their heads and made them start doing drugs and told them not to get a job?
Some men have no one but themselves to blame for their problems. You’re not actually helping them by making excuses for their poor life choices.
Why Work? Unemployed Family Can Make $80,000 In Benefits, Health Subsidies.
From other FR post
Wholeheartedly agree.
4 to 7 SMV female types “deserve” a 9 to 10. When it doesn’t happen, they settle. That invariably leads to catastrophe for men foolish enough to be involved the transaction.
My marriage advice: always go for the BBB: blonde, blue-eyed, bank account.
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