Thirty years ago this summer, the sociologist William Julius Wilson published When Work Disappears, in which he attributed high unemployment in urban, largely Black neighborhoods to structural changes in the economy. Conservatives dismissed his argument, contending instead that the problem was a poor work ethic enabled by a welfare system in desperate need of reform. But as a new unemployment crisis has arisen—this time more white, male, and rural—many figures on the right have discovered their inner structuralist.
Prevalent conservative explanations of why one in 10 “prime age” men (25- to 54-year-olds) are economically inactive focus on the decline of industries such as manufacturing and construction that traditionally have employed many men without college degrees. Sounding a lot like Wilson, some of these commentators indict trade policy. “They let other countries raid our factories, steal our jobs, and rob us blind,” President Trump has said of Obama-era policy makers. This critique dovetails with charges that Americans have been forced to fight for the remaining scraps with outsiders. “Legal immigration has been at such high levels, and it’s driven down wages and taken a lot of jobs,” Senator Tom Cotton has argued. And, as The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis recently described, the women’s-rights movement and affirmative action are also frequently invoked as forces that feminized the workplace and brought an end to the kind of work that gave men meaning (and that maybe made women want to date them).
From this diagnosis of men’s woes has followed a misguided attempt at a cure: setting tariffs in the hopes of bringing back manufacturing jobs, kicking out immigrants who might “steal” these jobs from “real” Americans, and vanquishing the DEI culture that has supposedly made workplaces hostile to white men. But the diagnosis is not correct: “Manly” jobs exist and employers are hiring. The trouble lies in finding men who are willing and able to take them.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported that, at the end of August, the mining, logging, construction, and manufacturing sectors had about 800,000 job openings. This represents an increase of 148,000 job openings in the past year, during which job openings across the entire economy increased by 160,000. Police departments and other law-enforcement agencies also have had high vacancy rates and difficulty filling those jobs. If the problem were a shortage of work in predominantly male occupations, these vacancies wouldn’t exist.
[Helen Lewis: The men who want women to be quiet]
Does every one of these open positions pay excellent wages, offer good benefits, and allow upward advancement? Surely not, and improving all of those things should increase the willingness of men to apply for work. But the dynamics that have led about 6.7 million men to drop out of the workforce go beyond that.
Part of the problem (so to speak, because in fact it is a virtue of our current system) is that, for many, dropping out of the workforce is not a catastrophic outcome. A century ago, men who did not work—and frequently, their wives and children as well—were in truly desperate situations and at risk for destitution, homelessness, and malnutrition. Real GDP has increased about 20-fold since then, and the federal safety net is exponentially more robust. In such a rich country, inequality notwithstanding, foregoing work incurs much less risk and hence becomes more tolerable. A further, informal safety net has expanded outside of government: Women have flooded into the workforce over the past 75 years, many of whom are now bringing home paychecks to these men. This is not to say that unemployment is congenial. Quite the opposite: It still leads to worse physical and mental health. But it is not as harsh as it once was.
The more consequential factor may be what men are doing with all of the hours that they aren’t working. The economist Nicholas Eberstadt, the author of Men Without Work, made an intriguing observation about the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Time Use Survey, which provides data on Americans’ daily activities. According to a 2020 Brookings Institute report, prime-age women outside the labor force spend about six hours a day on caregiving and other unpaid work at home; their male counterparts spend fewer than three. The average man without a job devotes less than an hour to such purposes. What these men are spending time on is an unprecedented array of affordable, addictive goods and services—including an average of five-and a half hours a day watching television and movies, plus many more on other screen-based activities such as watching pornography and playing video games. One recent study found that 52 percent of men ages 18 to 49 have an online sports-betting account.
This isn’t just about screen-based consumption. The legalization of marijuana production and sale has collapsed the price and increased the potency of the drug, making it inexpensive to be high most or all of the time. More than a quarter of working-age men who are not employed, in school, or in other training use marijuana, and they tend to consume it every day or almost every day.
These cheap, anesthetizing entertainments don’t just make empty hours fly by more enjoyably; they also may be making men less work-ready. Most jobs—manly or otherwise—require some ability to concentrate, to listen to and follow directions, and to endure discomfort. Many also require knowing how to interact respectfully with women. Days spent watching porn, gambling, and using drugs augment none of these skills. (This is the reality that Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently invoked in an ad depicting a welfare recipient as a young white man playing video games and eating junk food—prompting a number of conservative podcasters and commentators to take to their channels to condemn Sanders over what they felt was an unfair portrayal.) Men of course can still be asked to take more responsibility for themselves to be productive, but modern technology and drug legalization do make the boulder that they are rolling uphill much heavier than what their fathers pushed, and exacerbate the temptation to give up and let it roll back over them.
Rather than fretting about the alleged lack of manly jobs, policy makers should consider the various incentives that could point men back toward work. The simple answer may seem to be increasing wages and benefits. But this won’t fully address the problem: Higher wages can entice men to apply for a job, but they cannot suddenly turn people into high-functioning adults. As we have traveled around the country on the Brookings Institution–American Enterprise Institute commission on the future of rural America, employers in high-wage (usually unionized) industries such as coal mining, ship building, and welding have told us sad stories about the inability of many men to show up for work regularly and not under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
[David A. Graham: The right’s identity politics take a bizarre turn]
The recent experience of the U.S. military, which once had a huge role in readying men for work and for life in general, is instructive here.
After multiple years of missing recruiting targets, Pentagon officials worked with Congress to significantly increase military pay, particularly for the junior enlisted. That led to better recruiting numbers, but many who applied were not able to meet existing standards. The Army responded by creating a future-soldier-preparatory program for applicants who did not meet the physical or academic standards but could do so with a remedial course before basic training. Recruiting has improved significantly across all branches in the past two years.
Most men are probably not going to join the military, so what about those who don’t? As with any effort to change the behavior of large numbers of people, offering both carrots and sticks is essential. Social Security Disability Insurance has turned into a first-resort program for jobless men, and caseloads have risen dramatically. These programs could do with some tweaking to make benefits slightly harder to qualify for and remain on, which would create more pressure to seek work. On the incentive side, the Earned Income Tax Credit could be expanded to men who are low-income, noncustodial parents to make work more attractive. The corporations that both prey heavily on unemployed men and reduce their work readiness could also be brought to heel: We lived without legal sports gambling for decades and could go back to banning it now; marijuana could be treated more like tobacco, with tighter regulation and higher taxes. Such measures would create a healthier environment for nonworking men. Research also suggests that growing up around adults who are employed could have positive effects on the next generation’s own employment and educational aspirations. This creates the attractive possibility of helping more men be productive not only for their sake but for the health, social, and economic benefits that would accrue to the whole country.
Public-policy changes that reduce the risk of addiction and increase the incentives for economic productivity could help set American men onto a more productive path. But reintegrating missing men into social and economic life will likely require broader changes to culture and institutions as well. Schools that dropped demands for regular attendance and homework during the coronavirus pandemic could return to reinforcing better habits that are conducive to work-readiness. Charitable organizations that prepare young men for adult life need volunteers and donations to support them. And anyone who has a platform to communicate with young men should try to frame women’s rising romantic standards not as something to resent but as a stimulus to become better men.