
Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working (2016) - paulpauper
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men-not-at-work-why-so-many-men-ages-of-25-to-54-are-not-working/
======
jokoon
I've started some treatment recently, and for some reason I immediately
started dating and looking for mates again.

I quickly realized how difficult it is. You can't find women unless you have a
job, while women have made outstanding progress in education and the
workforce, and for some reason they have a hard time dating people who have a
less comfortable situation than themselves. I don't want to ride the whole
mensright bandwagon or to criticize feminism, but it can be a difficult source
of unhappiness for some.

I dated this young mother of two who managed to be a teacher for kids, she got
help from her middle class parents, I can really say that when you feel the
class struggle seeping into your love life, it is a very weird feeling. Of
course it's not the only reason, I'm not saying it, but it can the source of
other problems.

One generation behind us, women still sort of relied on men, and now that the
tables have turned, women might need to make a compromise.

Not to mention the whole tinder generation which is making things a little
weirder.

EDIT:

This comment is full of personal opinion, so take it with a big grain of salt.

~~~
bobbytherobot
> One generation behind us, women still sort of relied on men, and now that
> the tables have turned, women might need to make a compromise.

You mean the system was heavily stacked to make women reliant on men. I won't
call that a compromise.

The tables haven't turned, the game changed. We have drastically removed many
of the forces meant to keep women as dependents of men. If the tables had
turned, then men would be systematically be kept out of jobs, particularly
high paying careers. They most certainly are not being kept out of those jobs.

~~~
Frondo
Yes, this, a thousand times this.

People look at stuff like alimony or whatever and think "oh women just get all
the breaks". When really, stuff like that exists because women were expected
to forego career for marriage, etc., essentially shackled to a man for life.

Women being independent, expecting a guy to have his shit together? I think
that's great. I say bring it on. Independent women are far more interesting to
talk to, and if I have to have a good job lined up, well, that's how you play
the game.

Now...if society is breaking in a way that it's tough for men to get good
jobs, then let's look at that. Women aren't to blame for that, though. Let's
look at what's really going on.

~~~
J-dawg
So what do you do when there simply aren't enough jobs for most men to "have
their shit together"?

What are all those men going to do when they have both no stake in the
economy, and little or no chance of finding a woman to love them? What
percentage of men like this can society handle before some sort of tipping
point is reached?

I refer you to this comment from "wingless" from another discussion currently
on the front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13795855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13795855)

I'm always aware of this whenever the usual stuff about the "gender pay gap"
gets trotted out by the media. Men and men women are playing entirely
different games in the employment market. A woman is working for the money and
whatever satisfaction she derives from the job itself. A man is working for
his ability to attract a girlfriend, his status in society, his entire sense
of "value". It's hardly surprising that men are motivated to choose riskier
and higher earning careers.

~~~
Frondo
What I'd do is this:

1) Vote for politicians who are going to create real structural change in
society, e.g. Bernie, not just systems maintainers like Hillary, or rich guys
who want to rip us off, like the guy who won. (And really work at a local
level to enact structural systems changes!)

2) Work to change the cultural baggage around one's value being tied to one's
day job. Make it sexy to be a poet, writer, singer, househusband, whatever,
derive personal/interpersonal value from something other than a career. (And
again, work at a local level to make it OK not to have a big thriving career,
since it's not gonna happen for a lot of folks.)

That's what I'd do. The system of "men are worth something because of their
career" is broken, and will never come back. I wouldn't even try to
resuscitate it.

~~~
J-dawg
>Make it sexy to be a poet, writer, singer, househusband, whatever, derive
personal/interpersonal value from something other than a career.

I would dearly love to believe this is possible, but I fear it's not. I don't
think (most) women are capable of overcoming their programming to seek a high-
status provider.

~~~
Frondo
Really? I give women more credit than that.

For the first time in how many centuries, they don't have to be chained to
some dud with a good job, and they're figuring out what they want.

Good poetry? Being a good househusband? There's going to be quality in that.

World's changing, and you can't get away being a schlub just cause you've got
a good job anymore. I say bring it.

------
NumberSix
The explanation is that the government massages unemployment figures to make
the economy look better than it is. The government has been doing this for
decades, under Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.
Unemployment is one of the most widely watched and therefor political numbers;
anyone who is in power wants it to look as good as possible.

One of the tactics to make the official unemployment rates look better is to
classify some unemployed workers as "not looking for work." Voila! They don't
show up in the official estimates and it is their fault!

Most economists are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other
powerful institutions that have little interest in questioning the official
numbers. Hence lengthy academic discussions to try to "explain" the seemingly
odd behavior.

~~~
jack9
It's shocking, just plain shocking, how short people's memories are, in
regards to their own governmental details. The manipulations to deflate the
unemployment numbers, I was cognizant of in high school, have never stopped.
New techniques come up every administration (seemingly every year). It's like
how "the tech industry innovation value" is now added to the UDP arbitrarily.
Smoke and mirrors. Google "US employed population" then click "What percentage
of the US population is working?" -

What percentage of the US population is working?

According to the October jobs report, the seasonally adjusted employment-to-
population ratio was 59.2% last month, one percentage point higher than it was
a year earlier. Over that same period, the “official” unemployment rate fell
from a seasonally adjusted 7.2% to 5.8%.Nov 7, 2014

~~~
nodamage
59.2% is quite misleading because it includes students and retirees. The next
two paragraphs from your own source[1] say:

    
    
        One reason for the difference is that the share of Americans saying they 
        don’t want a job has trended up since the Great Recession: from 31.9% of
        the working-age population in October 2008 to 34.6% last month (on a 
        non-seasonally adjusted basis). Some of that increase, though, may be due
        to Baby Boomers reaching retirement age; as they leave the workforce over
        the next several years, labor economists expect the employment-to-population
        ratio to trend lower. Young adults staying in or returning to school also
        may be a factor.
    
        So if we look at just the 25-to-54 age group, which strips out most students
        and retirees, the employment-to-population ratio has been slowly improving
        since it bottomed out at 74.6% (not seasonally adjusted) in February 2011. 
        Last month, 77.3% of all 25-to-54-year-olds were employed, which is well below
        the indicator’s pre-recession high in October 2006, when 80.7% of people in 
        this age group were employed.
    

[1] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2014/11/07/employment-v...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2014/11/07/employment-vs-unemployment-different-stories-from-the-jobs-
numbers/)

~~~
lacker
Why should we exclude students and retirees from our key employment metrics?
Society must pay for students and retirees, and the higher the employment-to-
population ratio, the easier that is to do.

~~~
nodamage
I suppose it depends on the purpose of the metric you are evaluating. If your
goal is to find the percentage of people currently unemployed because they are
looking for a job but unable to get one, then it does not make sense to
include students or retirees that are not currently looking for work.

Besides, I'm not sure it's accurate to claim "society must pay for students
and retirees". Some students can pay for themselves (via loans) and some
retirees can pay for themselves (via their own retirement savings).

------
csa
I think that there is more to this story that just "low education low skill
men not working". I personally think that this has more to do with the poor
state of psychological health at this socio-economic status.

Specifically, the people I know who fall into this category have one or more
problems:

1\. One (big) problem is that they often have an enabler -- that is, someone
who is supporting these folks not working in some way. The fact that they
don't do more chores or childcare supports this hypothesis. As the video said,
sometimes it's the wife, sometimes it's the government via disability,
sometimes it's family.

2\. Another problem is issues with authority -- some of these folks are
difficult or impossible to manage. Of course, sometimes it's because the
company/manager is dysfunctional. Other times, the "issue" is that an employer
sets healthy boundaries, and someone who does not have healthy boundaries will
struggle to work within such an environment.

3\. A third problem is simply drug use. There are a not small number of jobs
that can be done by people with low education and low skills, but the employee
must be drug-free or must be a "functional" drug user. There is definitely a
chicken-egg question about drug use, but once drug use begins, getting and
keeping a job becomes much more difficult.

In the video, they say education is one of the keys to help the situation, and
I am not convinced that this is true with the current state of education in
the US. The education that needs to be done is more social/psychological in
nature, imho. Until this happens, these dysfunctional people will continue to
be dysfunctional. I don't want to pretend like this type of education is easy,
but I think that it's closer to the solution.

~~~
randomdata
Besides, education has never been more accessible. One can sit down at their
home computer – or one freely provided by a local library – and gain skills,
across a variety of professions, that can make them highly marketable.

These people aren't sitting at home watching TV because they lack education.
They lack education for the same reason they are sitting at home, which is a
much more complex topic, and not solved by simply making education even more
accessible.

~~~
dukeluke
You act like lower-class "uneducated" men _should_ be unable to get a job.
That's a bit messed up in my opinion. At a time of unparalleled wealth, all
classes should be prospering.

Also, I say "education" in quotes because today in an age where anyone can
learn anything on the internet, a lack of degree does not mean a lack of
education. A degree just shows you're willing to be compliant and follow an
arbitrary education system for years just to improve your social status. It
doesn't mean you're unable to learn.

~~~
threatofrain
It sounds like to me randomdata is suggesting that personality or psychology
is the 3rd missing variable, and that this psychological or personality trait
leads to both joblessness and poor education.

~~~
dukeluke
Suggesting that an entire block of the population doing poorly is simply
because they are lazy is definitely a stretch. Everyone wants to feel like
they are valued and are accomplishing something. Maybe they behave this way
because the opportunities for the uneducated have been eradicated due to
globalization and illegal immigration lowering the value of their work.

------
jimhefferon
OK, warning: what's coming is a wild personal opinion based on anecdotal
experience with a couple of guys.

There are a couple of guys I know who fit into the category in the article. I
don't believe that the solution proposed would have any effect. It just is at
an impedance mismatch with the mindset, with the culture.

I'll mention one guy I know, a neighbor, who fixes cars in his folks's barn,
for a living. He has no qualifications, no certifications and not much special
equipment. I hear him doing a lot of banging. People who have not much money
know him as a car-fixer guy who works cheap and bring him cars.

I very much admire his work ethic. When I let the dog out at 5:30 in the
morning he is at work already, banging hard, and I often hear him at 8 at
night. But he can't make any real money at it. People come to him precisely
because he doesn't charge much.

To an economist the thought is that if a person could improve their economic
and social standing by getting training or investing in specialized equipment,
like a lift, of course they would do it. The mathematical argument is
compelling.

But as I understand it, proposed solution of having these folks go in for
training just does not fit the culture. I heard him the other day in a
conversation about welding. He welds a little, but the guy asked him about a
particular job and he had to say that for that you'd need training.

Training is never going to happen. It isn't a lack of energy, or the needed
intelligence, or a belief in entrepeneurship among the men I know in this
category. It is a culture thing; "school" is just a non-starter.

~~~
Kenji
If you stop learning, you stop growing, financially and, much worse,
intellectually. People who refuse to learn have to make peace with the fact
that they remain in their exact place for the rest of their lives. However, I
do ask myself, how can someone who works from 5.30AM to 8PM afford to spend
any time to learn?

~~~
gspetr
Let me tell you how I did it.

I found a job for which I was overqualified and when I was done with the job
for the day I studied for a better job.

After doing this recursively a few times I landed a well paying job with great
health insurance.

It gets easier just as sailing in the ocean is easier than sailing near the
coast - you don't risk running aground.

------
hprotagonist
I don't know that gender has much to do, necessarily, with the fact that it's
hard to find a partner when your life consists of not doing much and watching
reruns.

The guilt-shame-depression-guilt cycle is certainly reinforced in non-working
men by indoctrination in a particular strain of patriarchal gender roles.
Having a little voice in the back of your head constantly yelling at you for
being a failure and "not really a man" can't be healthy.

~~~
dukeluke
The evolutionary strategies are different between the genders, mostly because
the biologically expensive act of growing a child for months and raising it
for years means women need to be more selective towards their mates.

~~~
hprotagonist
I pretty much regard "well, sexual pressures on evolution!" to be the
biologist's cop-out answer when they don't actually know what's going on.

I am male, and I would not want to date a woman who spends all day watching TV
and nothing else, either.

~~~
dukeluke
Are you suggesting there isn't a difference in reproductive strategy between
men and women? Edit: to those downvoting me, read this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mating_strategies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mating_strategies)

------
xt00
One big issue with this problem is that these men are not all in the same
location. Many of them are distributed through the so called rust belt areas
-- I've seen maps of this previously. So simply creating a few factories here
and there will only address a small part of the problem. They mentioned
infrastructure improvement as a way to put some of these people to work -- I
think that sounds reasonable because you can apply those jobs and money in the
areas hardest hit, but if it only lasts 3 years then it doesn't solve the
problem. It would make more sense to incentivize these people to move to areas
where there are just more jobs available -- for example, work doing
construction for somebody in Indiana for a while then transfer to someplace
else. There are tons of jobs across skill levels in areas where there is a
growing city. But if you live someplace where the population is declining and
have less than high school education then both companies and government are
not super excited about investing heavily there. Better to invest in the
suburbs of Chicago or Minneapolis rather than small towns that barely have
enough jobs anyway. But I think we need to help people move to places it's
easier to support long term. So my point is the location of these people is a
big factor.

~~~
csa
While I think location may be part of the problem, I think it's a relatively
small problem. IMHO, the biggest part of the problem is that many of these
people are not employable, and due to having an enabler, are not motivated to
become employable. There are lots of places in the Rust Belt looking for
people to hire, but they need people who will show up clean and sober who will
also do the work. These low requirements probably seem like a given to most of
the people on HN, but in some communities and some socio-economic classes,
this is definitely not a given.

~~~
xt00
Very true. It's definitely now a situation where we are dealing with the
fallout from years of not dealing with the problem. Yea I recently read a
story where a factory tried to hire around 50 people and could only hire a
small number due to the vast majority failing drug tests. I was actually
fairly surprised to hear that. So yea now we are dealing with the problem that
has been festering and getting worse for years..

~~~
tbrownaw
_Yea I recently read a story where a factory tried to hire around 50 people
and could only hire a small number due to the vast majority failing drug
tests._

Maybe the problem is whatever stupidity requires/incentivizes employers to
police what "their" employees do when not at work?

~~~
WJW
Depends on the drug of course, but since the vast majority of these substances
are both highly addictive and also severely impact your ability to operate
heavy machinery, people who test positive for (certain types of) drugs are
obviously more of a liability on a factory floor. I don't think it's stupidity
that makes employers hesitant in this case.

------
markwaldron
I don't personally know any men in that age range who fit that description,
but I can imagine that living in the middle of the country there are probably
fewer jobs than people. I've heard people suggest that they just relocate to
an area with more jobs, but it's very difficult for someone with little money
(and many times, little education) to relocate to more densely populated
areas.

As a whole, our society should not leave these people behind. It would be nice
to see more education initiatives focused towards getting people fitting this
description the training required to get them back in the workforce. Even if
the country couldn't afford to subsidize this fully, maybe set up a plan that
allowed them to pay 10-15% of their salary for a year or two like some coding
boot camps do.

------
IanDrake
This article strikes out at the end. The answer for the folks who have given
up looking for a job isn't easier access to college as suggested.

When someone drops out of high school it's not because they had too few
choices to go to college, it's because they didn't see any value in the
education they were already getting.

We need more vocational education and it needs to start earlier in life.

They should also teach a class in high school called "life" in which kids have
to construct a virtual life for themselves, finds a place to live on
Craigslist, price furniture, calculate food expenses, gas, electric, internet,
mobile, insurance, etc, etc, so they have a good concept of what they're up
against. Then talk about serious alternatives to pay for that life, a
vocation, the military, college professional.

My HVAC guy didn't need college; it would be a huge waste of money and it
would have postponed his career by 4 years. People like him can make six
figures if they're good and easily support a family of 4.

~~~
swiley
I think even better would be to make education completely voluntary. This
would help highlight the benefits so that the people who don't value it could
make better choices.

~~~
bradleyankrom
For minors, the decision whether or not to enroll in school would be left up
to the parents, which isn't always ideal for the kid or the community (see,
for example, the vaxxer movement).

------
rrggrr
"We will have to write off one to two entire generations". This from one
industrial client who manages a workforce in the rural and suburban south.
Why? The skills gap. Drug abuse, particularly meth. Competition from
disability, welfare and black market income sources. I've heard similar from
other clients. Their contempt for politicians stems largely from their
perceptions that rural/middle America has been left to rot as big cities and
technology centers thrive. The recent election in the US should have been
viewed by both sides as the mother of all wake-up calls for Congress and the
President to deliver results. Instead... outright political civil war with
both sides having blame.

~~~
dandersh
The results of the recent election were driven by inefficiencies in the
American electoral system, such as the electoral college, gerrymandered
districts that result in Republicans holding more seats than their vote totals
would suggest, etc.

The "skills gap" is largely a result of the actions of employers. There is
disdain for on the job training for easily learnable, high access jobs such as
waitstaff, cashiers, etc. Furthermore they aim to pay as little as possible,
while being as demanding as possible. They have stopped using defined
weekly/biweekly scheduling and switched to unpredictable schedules that
rapidly shift total hours worked, days worked, and even reduced hourly shifts.
Oftentimes these jobs do not pay markedly more than one would get struggling
to get by via social programs, family/friends, etc.

~~~
dang
> _Middle America 's stubborn refusal to move forward_

This is a form of name-calling, which the site guidelines ask you not to do:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

~~~
pault
I vouched for GP because they seem to have removed the name-calling.

------
cutler
Like a lot of studies which simply count "jobs" this one misses the point. The
combination of wages being driven down, broken unions and sky-high rents mean
the real value of many jobs is worthless. Here in the UK zero-hours contracts
and low pay are endemic whilst most low income earners rely on housing benefit
to supplement their pay. Simply having a job does not mean having a living
income.

------
soneca
Among other things, this man thinks there is a causality between men playing
video game and not looking for work.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/11/erik_hurst_on_w.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/11/erik_hurst_on_w.html)

~~~
gspetr
Can confirm, know a guy who plays video games and is not looking for work.

Playing video games _is_ his work.

------
jaypaulynice
I think it's the other way around...able men aren't looking for work because
the job market isn't attractive. They must be doing something that satisfies
them one way or another. I have a problem when people start pointing out that
they must be junkies doing drugs and alcohol.

To think that a dysfunctional "job" is somehow superior means there is some
kind of social agenda/engineering going on...blaming the people who are
affected when it's clear that the problem is employers looking for cheaper
outsourcing. What we have right now is social engineering and "thought
leaders" trying to excuse the obvious.

I think it's extremely concerning to think someone who doesn't work isn't a
productive member of society and to conclude that they're doing household
chores. Many rich people who inherit their fortunes do not work, but no one
says they are junkies etc...

------
crdoconnor
>What should we do about it? > >Government policy can make a difference,
Furman argues. Improving education and access to college could help by making
workers more attractive to employers. So would spending more on helping people
find jobs, as other countries do. Providing child-care subsidies and paid
leave could draw more men – and women — into the workforce. Expanding the tax
subsidies offered to low-wage workers so jobs are more attractive would be a
plus, too.

The Brookings institution rarely fails to advocate for corporation and profit-
friendly solutions.

In the 30s, they solved (actually solved, rather than giving out corporate
welfare) the problem with the PWA:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration)

------
fallingfrog
Well if these guys aren't on disability, or married, then how are they getting
money for food and rent? The article never answers that question- I don't
think the us safety net is comfy enough to provide rent money. Are they all
homeless?

------
kristianc
I wonder why it is that articles like this, which cover issues relevant to
heterosexual middle aged white men are never flagged as 'political' when they
appear on Hacker News?

------
I_am_neo
Is finding a "wife" that important?

------
ArkyBeagle
And ( to my ear ) the always reliable Dean Baker addresses "the money thing"
in "Rigged". Scott Sumner has also written at length on the subject.

There are two mandates to the Fed - price stability and ( Humphrey-Hawkins )
employment. With the exception of the Greenspan era pre-2000, Fed policy has
set employment in the back seat.

Because "Inflation BAAAAD!" ( in the manner of Phil Hartman's Frankenstein's
monster ).

So we have 2% growth targets that we undershoot and low growth. The population
has adapted in ways described in Tyler Cowen's "The Complacent Class".

~~~
dang
We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13796757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13796757)
and marked it off-topic.

