How can 6 million able-bodied men simply choose not to work?
Last week, the employment news was all about how payrolls increased by 269,000 jobs and blew past expectations. Yet, when we looked at the actual number of employed persons, it turned out that the number of employed people has gone down in recent months. At 158.4 million, total employment is still nearly 400,000 workers below where it was before the Covid Panic of 2020.
Those who support the everything-is-great narrative have responded to the unimpressive employed-workers numbers by dismissing them as a result of workers retiring and other demographic changes. These explanations, however, require that we ignore the fact that millions of men age 25-54—that is, men of working age—have removed themselves from the workforce. When so many men—men who would have been in the workforce 20 or 30 years ago—aren’t even trying to get a job, this lowers the unemployment rate and makes total jobs numbers look more impressive.
In fact, as of September of this year, there appears to be nearly a six-million-man gap between the number of men in the prime-age group—age 25-54—and the number of prime-age men actually in the workforce. Depending on why they’re out of the workforce, that is potentially some very bad news for both the economy and for society overall.
How Many Men Are Out of the Work Force?
Prime-age male workforce participation rose year-over-year in November, rising to 88.4 percent above last November’s estimate of 88.2 percent. Workforce participation has been climbing out of a hole since the rate hit an all-time low of 86.4 percent during April 2020.