There have been a great many people talking about the success of Bidenomics and how great the economy is doing, and yet how few people seem to believe so. Most argue that the problem isn’t the economy, but the messaging, that people just don’t know the economy is doing swell and so they believe it’s not. Then again, the economy is one of those curious things that requires no messaging. People are either making money or not. Costs are either inflating or not. People are living well or not. If not, no amount of messaging is going to convince them they’re doing fabulous.
Something that is rarely spoken about is why, if the economy is doing great, there are so many homeless people. If unemployment is at historic lows, why are they not employed? Why are they not homed with the money they’re earning from this booming economy and real wage growth? We can see the homeless. Indeed, we can’t avoid seeing them, much as some may want to. How is it possible that these great economic numbers don’t include them?
But there is another group that hasn’t managed to enjoy the beneficence of Bidenonomics and aren’t easily seen defecating on the streets. NILFs. That’s not a typo.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reports that work among prime-age Americans—those between 25 and 54 years of age—is at the highest rate in two decades, driven by rising wages and worker shortages. After years of decline in labor force participation, this is certainly welcome news. But it isn’t the whole story.
To put it bluntly: The resurgence of work is largely leaving men behind. While the labor-force participation rate for prime-age women has jumped above its pre-pandemic level, going from 76.8 percent in February 2020 to 77.8 percent today—an all-time high—the male rate is about the same today that it was in February 2020 (89.1 percent then, 89.2 now). Where rates of labor-force participation for women have risen significantly over the past half century, the other side of the data reflects a decades-long retreat from work among men:
There is a “dirty little secret” that polite folks never mention. When women entered the workforce, they competed with men for the same jobs. The number and quality of jobs might expand and contract, but not in proportion to the participation rate of women. That meant something had to give, and that something turned out to be men’s jobs.
This collapse in work participation has been accompanied by a surge in men’s dependence on disability payments and other safety net programs like Supplemental Nutritional Assistance (SNAP). Unsurprisingly, non-work and welfare is also correlated with “deaths of despair,” incarceration, and single parenthood.
As Nicholas Eberstadt has documented, men who are “not in the labor force” (NILF) are alarmingly disengaged from others and overly self-focused. According to federal time-use surveys, NILFs do very little work of any kind, whether paid, unpaid, household chores, or caring for family members. Most of their waking hours are occupied with “personal care” and “socializing, relaxing, and leisure,” with much of the latter devoted to looking at screens: phones, computers, and television.
We’re told about mental health and suicide issues. Drug and alcohol abuse. Guess which sex is taking a beating? Brent Orrel argues that men’s failure to pull themselves up by their bootstraps is a product of too many incentives to be slackers and wastrels. Is that right? Are men willing, nee desirous, of getting back in the game but finding an unanticipated problem when companies are so desperate to show they are diverse that they will bend over backwards to give a job to a marginally qualified woman or minority rather than a well qualified man?
When we talk about the historically low unemployment rate, we’re only talking about people actively seeking employment, not NILFs. When we talk about the job market being hot, hot, hot, we’re mostly talking about minimum wage and unskilled jobs. What about higher salary and skill positions? Are NILFs the invisible failure of Bidenomics, even though the men who read and hear about how great the economy is doing can’t seem to get anyone to hire them for a decent job at a decent pay commensurate with their education and experience?
Or are men just staying home, leaving the job market, so they can spend their days on social media, watching porn or perhaps calling for a date, while using their SNAP checks to buy Cheetos? Something is very wrong, no matter what the messaging about the economy is, but what is it?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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They say “Hard work never hurt anyone”… but why take a chance.
Well, the NILFs may look like a bunch of lumpen screw-offs, but actually, they are all in politics.
Congress has become DC’s premier elder care facility…
[Ed. Note: Focus, Hal. FOCUS.]
A woman looking to get into traditionally male professions has piles of money to dive into if she so chooses, about 96% of scholarship money based on gender go to women and that really helps with kicking off those awesome STEM careers. That… is decidedly not the case for men who want to work what are predominantly female jobs. How about a little help for them?
Social progress towards
The American DreamThe Beautiful And Damned aside, how high above pre-pandemic levels does a rate have to go before it “jumps above”? They’re both higher.Also, the non-participation rate for men (since we’re talking NILFs here, not ILFs) is still less than half that of the rate for women. Female NILFs went down from 23.2% to 22.2%, while male NILFs also went down (or “stayed the same,” depending on your math), from 10.9% to 10.8%.
And the story here is “What about the men?”? That women are taking jobs from men and men are getting left behind? Contrasting the relative change in these rates over the last half century as if they started from the same baseline is a little silly.
Maybe the story here is that people just want a way to work NILF into a headline.
Your piercing analysis managed to skip over a rather significant point. Women, who are now the majority of college graduates, can choose to work or not, as they see fit, without neither personal nor societal condemnation. Men still don’t have that option, and despite all the woke pretense, women still expect their mate to be a better earner than them. The dynamics aren’t reflected in the statistics that fail to distinguish men who are working up to their educational and experiential expectations and men who are driving Ubers to survive.
I’m chewing on this to make sure I’m not missing the point (which happens regularly, with an epiphany typically coming 5 seconds after posting) but it seems like this is parallel to my own — that the rate of non-participation is still twice as high for women, yet the hand-wringing is over the men…whether the claim is they are being incentivized to be “slackers and wastrels” (the societal condemnation factor) or the claim is they are being displaced from jobs they need by women who supposedly need them (and the higher earnings) less. If part of the gap is the disparity of those choosing to go to college instead, it surely is both a small part compared to other sociohistorical factors and also indicative of societal expectations of (snarky cynicism about college aside) a path to those jobs and higher earnings.
More of the non working women are being supported by spouses. It seems likely that more of the non working men are on assistance.
Yes, this is the elephant in the room of my analysis, and the foundational factor for the historical disparity. But nobody is rushing to do a remake of Mr. Mom these days and in the 80s it was a high concept hit. Now it’s a typical supporting character. This change could account for much of a pre-2020 drop for men, while a migration of women to assistance would have less impact on the numbers.
The story here could be that women still have relatively low participation, but the journalist here tries to frame a post-2020 increase of the higher number for men as cause for concern. And ultimately there may be, but it’s definitely coded along lines of gender expectations that are getting scrambled with the younger generations
The reason people think they are worse off is because they are. Compared to pre-pandemic my grocery bill is up 25%, my entertainment costs (restaurants, streaming services, travel) are up 50%. My salary is up less than 5% and I do not expect a raise this year. I own my house but rents are skyrocketing for most people.
Telling people that the economy is doing well is a clueless move. People who are poorer know it and this strategy will just increase resentment to the out of touch elites. I realize that I am fortunate compared to most Americans but even upper middle class people like me are cutting their budgets.
The Labor Force Participation Rate is a useful & interesting statistic. It measures the percentage of people working vs population on a monthly basis since 1950, with more detailed sub-cohorts for shorter periods. It avoids the pitfalls of the Unemployment rate which looks only at those “looking for work”
The overall index moved steadily upward from 1950 to a peak of 67.3% in early 2000. It has trended steadily downwards since (to 62.6% today). Use of the overall index hides some pertinent trends. One is that the denominator includes everybody, e.g. those too young & those too old to work. Thus it has noise from demographic bulges (e.g. the baby boomers). Secondarily, it misses the massive difference between men & women.
Once can thus look at the LFPR for only the age group 25-54, ie those who should be out of school & not yet retired. This index peaks at 84.6% in 1999 & has basically leveled off since to 83.5% today.
But when you break that age group down to men & women you get a rather startling difference.
Women move steadily upwards until they hit about 77% in 2000. Essentially sideways since then but today (77.6%) is the highest ever.
Men, however, have been a disaster. They start at 97% in 1960 and it has been downhill ever since to 89% today. Basically 11% of all working age males in this country are not working. Where are they? Don’t know. Some have gone back to school. Some have gone to live with mom & dad. Some are on Disability. Some retired early. Some are in a tent on the street. But having one in ten of all working age males not working cannot be good for the country. If nothing else they are needed to help keep Social Security afloat.
For those interested, all these data sets (and more) are available at the FRED.
One thing that is wrong is that we don’t know anything about the male NILFs. Why assume they are all worthless? Maybe most of them are househusbands and retired startup CEOs, lawyers, stock marketeers, trust fund children, etc. The abuse of statistics involving male and female labor-force participation rates has already been pointed out. [The “dirty little secret” is perhaps more of an elephant in the room.]
But how can the economy be doing well yet so many are feeling an economic pinch? What if most of the benefits of the booming economy only went to a small group of wealthy individuals? Most people don’t care about the overall economy, just how they are doing. Still, one can only imagine that, with a little hard work and some smart choices, 85% of us could boost ourselves into the top 1%.