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Why have so many men stopped working?
CNN Money ^ | 09/11/2015

Posted on 09/11/2015 6:44:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Fifty years ago, nearly every single working-age American man had a job or was looking for one. That's not the case anymore.

The labor force participation rate for men ages 25 to 54 stood at nearly 97% in 1965, but now hovers near a record low of 88%. That rate includes those who are working or have looked for a job in the past four weeks.

If the participation rate had held steady, more than five million additional men would be in the workforce. Men are dropping out of the labor force in large part because they can't find positions that pay decently or they don't have the education and skills to land employment, experts say.

Richard Kessler is one of them.

Kessler, who worked as a research analyst and database manager at financial information firms, hasn't held a job since he was laid off during the recession of the early 1990s. He was 37.

Unable to find a job, he became a stay-at-home dad to his son, Chris. Still, he looked for work and went through a retraining program, learning computer skills such as Word and Excel, in the mid-1990s. The positions he was offered, however, paid only $8 an hour.

"It didn't make sense to give that to a babysitter," said Kessler, now 60, who lives in Bernardsville, N.J., with his wife, a business analyst. Kessler decided to start looking again when Chris hit his teen years. But that coincided with the Great Recession, when jobs were again scarce. He hasn't sent out a resume in more than a year, saying he now lacks the technical skills and references needed to land employment.

"I don't know what's worse -- the stress of not having a job or the stress of having a job," he said.

(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: economy; employment; jobs; men; obamalegacy; work
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To: SeekAndFind

They vote for a living, it’s really hard.


21 posted on 09/11/2015 7:09:50 AM PDT by DungeonMaster (Of those born of women there is not risen one greater than John The Baptist.)
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To: Crucial

They don’t take less for the same work.
The gender wage gap is a lie, because it looks at average wages for men and for women across all ages and job categories.

Women with no skills get minimum wage as house cleaners, daycare workers, retail clerks. Men with no skills can make 10-20 an hour carrying heavy stuff on the construction site.

Women with a little job training work as medical assistants for ten bucks an hour. Guys will a little training make $20 or more in pest control, equipment operation, dangerous work that most women avoid.

Women going to college get 4 year degrees or more in childhood education, liberal arts and other fields that don’t pay more. Men statistically get more degrees in engineering, geology and fields that pay more. If these women wanted to make more, they’d get a degree with value in the workplace instead of building up their self-esteem and then wondering why few people want to pay them to be whiners. (Unfortunately, too many become chekists / political officers in HR.)

But the college system is biased toward women to the point that women earn around 60% of college degrees. And much of the marriage gap women complain about is that they don’t want to marry a well-paid blue collar man but instead compete over the smaller number of male graduates. Likewise, the workplace wonders where all the guys with skills for the jobs are, after preventing many from earning the credentials the workplace now requires.


22 posted on 09/11/2015 7:13:16 AM PDT by tbw2
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To: SeekAndFind

A research analyst who didn’t have Word and Excel skills?

And the guy with $100K meds—wouldn’t that be covered under Obamacare, and wouldn’t he still be eligible for subsidies on it, since $15-18/hr wouldn’t put him at whatever times the poverty level the threshold is?

Since when did men decide it is more emasculating and shameful to take a job at what the market will bear—rather than not working at all?

If the men with criminal records can’t get hired, we should have government jobs for them of some sort.


23 posted on 09/11/2015 7:13:52 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: SeekAndFind
Per Petula Clark - "It's a sign of the times"

Per Dylan - "The times they are a changin"

Society has degenerated where nothing embarrasses or humiliates even the most venal folks.

God said it would happen and it's only gonna get worse before Jesus comes back ...

24 posted on 09/11/2015 7:14:32 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: SeekAndFind

Because hipster slacking is now cool. You can always find a woman online who is willing to sleep with you, so no need busting your hump to pay the bills to support a wife.


25 posted on 09/11/2015 7:16:17 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Arm_Bears

I’m 74 and I still work. The kids today don’t have a good education to deal with technology. Their math skills are abysmal and they have no common sense. But I work because I need the money to stay alive. My medications exceed $1000 per month. I’ve never been on the dole in my life.


26 posted on 09/11/2015 7:18:31 AM PDT by batterycommander (- a little more rubble, a lot less trouble.)
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To: SeekAndFind

knowing word and excel is sort of like being able to read and write and cipher........ just basic knowledge

the date cited is 1965, before women’s lib and the massive entry of women into the market. women displaced men

the retail banking business was taken over by women displacing all the men in that occupation for instance. earning EEo credit, black women displaced many black men in the work force . A capable woman was cheaper than a man and therefore preferable


27 posted on 09/11/2015 7:23:48 AM PDT by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc.;+12, 73, ....carson is the kinder gentler trump)
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To: kabar

I’ll remember these figures the next time that leftwing pr*ck Zuckerberg whines about needing to import more workers.


28 posted on 09/11/2015 7:25:17 AM PDT by skeeter
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To: tbw2

A lot, though, are middle to late-middle-aged men who are simply refusing to work jobs they feel are beneath them—either in task or pay.

I know one, an attorney with several degrees, who has been looking for work now for a decade, sending out resumes for jobs employers don’t want to hire him for and saying how he can’t afford to take a lower-skill, lower-pay job in the meantime.


29 posted on 09/11/2015 7:26:51 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: Arm_Bears

RE: In my case, nobody seems terribly interested in hiring a 60-year old White, conservative, Christian.

I thought age, race and religious discrimination was illegal for the workplace?


30 posted on 09/11/2015 7:30:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind (What is the difference between Obama and government bonds? Government bonds will mature someday)
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To: MeganC

Ping for your Interest Megan Dear.


31 posted on 09/11/2015 7:31:25 AM PDT by KC_Lion (This Millennial is for Cruz!)
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To: 9YearLurker
A lot, though, are middle to late-middle-aged men who are simply refusing to work jobs they feel are beneath them—either in task or pay.

Women who have held corporate office jobs - especially if they gained some "management" title or another due to political correctness - behave exactly the same way. We have hired a few of those to work in our retail stores in the recent past. Never again.

32 posted on 09/11/2015 7:32:02 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves (Heteropatriarchal Capitalist)
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To: skeeter
We continue to bring in 1.1 million legal permanent immigrants a year along with 640,000 guest workers annually. At the same time, we have the lowest labor participation rates in 38 years. There is a huge disconnect between legal immigration and our job and skill needs. The primary beneficiaries are the employers like Zuckerberg who can offer lower wages given the surplus of labor. They privatize the profits and socialize the costs.

Civilian labor force participation rate


33 posted on 09/11/2015 7:32:34 AM PDT by kabar
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To: kabar

We’re getting our pockets picked by bureaucrats and billionaires and called racists when we complain.


34 posted on 09/11/2015 7:34:13 AM PDT by skeeter
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To: SeekAndFind
I work, I make my wife work and earn more than me . . .
is that double dipping ?
35 posted on 09/11/2015 7:37:53 AM PDT by ßuddaßudd (>> F U B O << "What the hell kind of country is this if I can only hate a man if he's white?")
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To: SeekAndFind

“A 60-year-old white, conservative Christian male.” That’s me! And in my case I got really sick of lame-ass office jobs, where I was always in trouble for coming up with creative solutions to problems that my Jewish female bosses just accepted. I was a real square peg in a liberal hell-hole. So now I’m self-employed, and I feel like I don’t have a job. And sometimes my bank account feels like I don’t have a job, but somehow I’m always saved by something. We’re doing OK, probably better than my parents, who both had traditional jobs and hated them.


36 posted on 09/11/2015 7:42:42 AM PDT by duckworth (Perhaps instant karma's going to get you. Perhaps not.)
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To: Mr. Jeeves

They likely do feel and act that way, but at least they took your jobs in your retail stores—the men wouldn’t even bring themselves to that.


37 posted on 09/11/2015 7:43:45 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: SeekAndFind

Not enough jobs.

Too many illegals.

Anti-Capitalists in Washington.

The EPA.


38 posted on 09/11/2015 7:51:06 AM PDT by PATRIOT1876 (The only crimes that are 100% preventable are those committed by illegal aliens)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Because hipster slacking is now cool. You can always find a woman online who is willing to sleep with you, so no need busting your hump to pay the bills to support a wife.


I want to be careful how I say this, so I don’t get banned. But, have heard some people say that men will be motivated by what the women in their lives expect from them.

Based on this, if critical numbers of women kept their legs closed to “slacker” men, you would see far fewer slacker men.


39 posted on 09/11/2015 8:03:37 AM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: trebb

Per Petula Clark - “It’s a sign of the times”


Whatever happened to Petula Clark?? I always wanted to go Downtown with her............


40 posted on 09/11/2015 8:04:20 AM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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