ANCHORING THE LIVES OF MORE PRIME-AGE MEN IN MEANINGFUL WORK
Peyton Roth
The question of declining social wellbeing among men in their prime working years and their participation in paid work is one of entangled causes and consequences.
Jobs provide more than financial security and a path to economic mobility. Work can also be an important anchor in life—a source of meaning, purpose, stability, and provides a network of supportive individuals.
But research also suggests that access to a vibrant social network and high levels of social capital is a crucial driver of participation in the labor force, and more importantly positive employment experiences.
MEN PULLING AWAY FROM THE WORKFORCE
Participation in paid work is both cause and consequence of strong social connections. This cyclical and interconnected relationship presents a dilemma when examining the participation rate of men in the labor force in America today. Prime-age men (those between the ages of 25 and 54) are experiencing significant levels of loneliness and social disconnection, and they are also more likely to sit on the sidelines of the labor market than at any point since a reliable measure for labor force participation rates was developed.
Scale. For decades, a gradual but immense retreat from paid work among prime-age men went unnoticed by social scientists amid large advancements in our nation’s overall prosperity. Yet a similar share of men work in full- or part-time jobs today as at the end of the Great Depression in 1940 (Figure 2).
SOURCE: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
This trend may come as a surprise to those used to following conventional reporting on the unemployment rate, which has fluctuated predictably in tandem with the business cycle since the mid-20th century. But conventional unemployment statistics mask the true employment challenge of today because they only count those who are actively looking for work. The long-term drop in the share of men working as observed above is rather driven by a shockingly consistent half-century rise in the share of men who have fallen out of the workforce entirely—neither working nor looking for work (Figure 3).
SOURCE: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
A portion of this half-century quadrupling of male workforce dropout is benign. As seen in figure 4 below, men tend to spend more time in higher education than they did a hundred years ago. Some have opted to stay at home and raise families while their female spouse works full-time. Others have taken an early retirement. But the scale of these factors is minimized by those who have cited either disability or no particular reason at all for leaving the labor force.
SOURCE: United States Joint Economic Committee, Social Capital Project.
The period from the turn of the century to the fallout of the Great Recession saw a shift in awareness of this crisis as pioneering scholars like Charles Murray, Robert Putnam, and Nicholas Eberstadt raised alarms that America’s half-century of overwhelming prosperity had also been marked by an equally startling decline of social institutions in America’s poor and working classes. Equally importantly, they warned that Tocqueville’s famous line on the American’s industrious spirit—that, “All that he asks of the State is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure of his earnings”—had been fraying for some time among men.
The most obvious fault line in this rift formed between men who were college-bound and those who were not. By 2016, the percent of prime-age men with only a high school degree who were not participating in work (17 percent) stood at more than three times the levels of workforce dropout as those with a college degree or more (5 percent).
Longevity. Worklessness among men also seems to carry an unsettling permanence or longevity in many individual cases. Research on the cyclical dynamics of inactivity among men suggests that a little over one fifth of men who are neither working nor looking for work at any given time will weave in and out of employment in cycles. A vast majority of inactive men, however, have been that way for a prolonged time.
Rural and urban differences. Analyses of the counties with the lowest rates of male work suggest the greatest concentrations of this challenge can be found in small- to mid-sized metropolitan areas located throughout the upper mid-west, deep south, plain states, and the intermountain west. The crucial finding in this is not in any one region of particular concentration but rather the reality that our “men without work” trend is most pronounced outside metropolitan centers. Though by no means exclusively confined to rural America,
the challenges of inactivity among prime-age men appear most acutely felt in less densely populated areas. In fact, Census analyses show that labor force participation dropped three times as quickly in rural places compared to urban places between 2007 and 2019.
Lifestyle. Available data are thin on the lifestyle led by men who have left the labor force, but analyses of the American Time Use Survey suggest that prime-age men who are neither employed nor in education or training spend nearly five hours a day in front of screens.
Alan Krueger found that men who have left the labor force spend more than 50 percent more time alone than those in the workforce. Men who have left the workplace are more likely to live alone, and more likely to say they do not get invited to things by others and that they have no one available to share their worries or fears with. Krueger also found that more than half of men outside the labor force consume pain medication every day. Other studies have found tight statistical associations between low levels of labor force participation and alcoholism in communities.
These signs about the lives of our modern-day men without work serve as a reminder that employment is not just an important source of economic security but also a crucial thread in the social capital fabric of a person’s life. A wealth of social science literature confirms the vast immaterial benefits of work. Social psychologist Marie Jahoda identified five crucial “latent” benefits to employment:
1. Time structuring
2. Access to shared experiences with non-familial peers 3. Access to shared goals
4. A sense of personal identity
5. Enforced levels of activity
Social science research over the years has generally confirmed and expanded this model, demonstrating a multitude of positive social and psychological effects of work. Work is not a panacea when it comes to social capital. Researchers have even found links to negative outcomes when workers are in employment situations that fail to offer a sense of job autonomy or opportunity for social connection in the workplace. However, on the whole, research suggests that paid employment is a cornerstone of a healthy social life for men.
Why the Retreat from Work?
Traditional economic wisdom suggests that labor force participation and the business cycle should fluctuate in relative harmony. As job opportunities increase and employers are required to fend for talent, more working-age men will be drawn back into the labor force by higher wages. Yet, as shown in Figure 3 above, men’s retreat from work has risen both gradually and with an uncanny consistency in recent decades—almost regardless of the current business cycle. Demand-side explanations for the male retreat from work are further shattered by the stubborn persistence of this share of men on the sidelines amid the COVID-19 economic recovery. At the writing of this essay, the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows 11.2 million job openings.
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Some may contend that decline of particular industries that are the responsible culprits for driving less-educated men away from the workforce. And yet manufacturing and construction job openings, too, remain at 21st century highs in this perplexing post-pandemic era.
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At no point in recent memory have job seekers held more power than they do now. And yet the flood of available jobs on the market has not barely put a dent in the prime-age Not In Labor Force (NILF) population, leaving behind a strange new trend of nearly two job openings per unemployed person.
Economists have offered numerous structural theories for why men have taken such a historic retreat from paid employment. Many such explanations suggest stagnant or declining wages, rapid technological changes, or trade-induced industry shocks are the defining trends.
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Declining health among prime-age men—signaled by a large increase in disability insurance payouts over the past 60 years—is another common explanation.
Each of these explanations likely holds some truth. But, as we will see, individually fail to encompass the full scope of the Depression-era retreat from work that is observable today.
Downward Wages, Tech, and China Shock? Scholars and pundits argue that declining wages and labor market value among non college-educated men have discouraged workers and driven them out of the labor market. Usually, this “discouraged” or “disgruntled” worker demand-side theory implies that global trade and technological advancements have hollowed out manufacturing and agriculture jobs in America’s heartland, shifting the job landscape and putting downward pressure on men’s wages. They argue that non-college educated men are unprepared for the new wave of stable, well-paying service jobs. Bipartisan efforts to bring China within the fold of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Meant China and other developing nations gradually sapped America of her manufacturing might—while benefiting consumers with affordable manufactured goods.
There is truth to be found in this narrative. It is well-established that America’s trade practices with China have left us vulnerable on several fronts. Technological change has dramatically shifted the landscape of available jobs for Americans with less than a college degree. Research does suggest that some regions—such as the inland of California— experienced “trade shocks” with dramatic short-term repercussions on their local economies. In fact, it is estimated that almost 50 percent of labor markets experienced a loss in real wages when hit by the China shock. However, workers in most regions relocated to construction and services jobs quickly, prompting a quick rebound.
A counter to the “China shock” and technological change argument is evidence that suggest men’s wages have not, in fact, declined in recent decades—as Scott Winship has documented extensively. Analyses that break out earnings by educational attainment give the illusion of declining hourly wages for men with a high school degree or less. However, these analyses fail to account for the shifting relative distribution between educational strata: non-college educated men today are a much smaller share of the overall population than they were in the 1960s and 70s.
Analyses accounting for well-documented shortfalls of traditional inflation measures and examining consistent groups across time suggest that hourly wages have remained stagnant for men below the median. They dipped slightly during the 1980s and in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession before rebounding.
This is not good news, per se. Amid dramatic increases in America’s wealth, stagnant wage growth at the lower end of the spectrum is not sufficient—and lower-wage workers have likely felt the real effects of America’s upper classes pulling away. It is also true that growth in women’s earnings has dramatically outpaced men’s earnings over the past half century—shifting the relative importance of men’s wages in the marketplace. Nonetheless, declining wages due to technology and trade shocks are likely not the primary driver of men’s historic retreat from work, as we shall see below.
Worsening health? Among all the trends associated with the rise of inactivity among prime-age men, perhaps the most stark has been the notable increase in the share of workers who cite a disability or health condition as a reason for not working. In parallel with this rise has been an equally significant increase in the major federal disability assistance program—Social Security Disability Insurance (Figure 8).
SOURCE: Social Security Administration, "Table 3. Number, average, and total monthly benefits, December 1960–2021,"Annual Statistical Report on the Social Security Disability Insurance Program, 2021, October 2022.
Nearly half of prime-age men who have dropped out of the labor force list a disability as their primary reason for not working. And only 32 percent of prime-age people who reported a disability on the CPS in 2018 were attached to the labor force. Analyses by Scott Winship estimate that men who report a disability account for two fifths of the rise in reported inactivity among prime-age men between 1994 and 2014.
These trends seem countervailing to advances in medical technology and declining mortality rates in the last century. But living longer doesn’t necessarily mean living healthier. Adults may still suffer from more health challenges amid declining mortality so long as medical practices sufficiently delay the consequences of those health conditions. Further, some sub-groups, such as less-educated White, non-Hispanic men have seen increases in mortality recently, primarily driven by rising “deaths of despair” (suicide, alcohol abuse, or drug abuse); research by Christopher Ruhm further isolates this mortality increase to the advent of the opioid crisis.
Self-reported health data suggest that prime-age men are more likely to experience health complications related to obesity and diabetes, and they are more likely to have a problem completing daily activities than they were in 2000. Diane Schanzebach, too, has found indicators of rising self-reported stress among prime-age men. One study found that increases in self-reported poor mental health accounted for two of the top 10 most common reasons for early death among men in 2016. Many other studies suggest a growing burden of chronic disease among adults in the US—though these figures are partially, but not completely, explained by an aging population and so not clarifying for our interest in prime working age men.
Self-reported health data among men suggest a picture of declining health. Analyses of the National Health Interview Survey by Angela Rachidi suggest that less educated prime-age people are more likely to report an activity-limiting health condition than their more educated peers, and they are less likely to participate in the labor force if they do report an activity-limiting condition. For example, Rachidi found that adults with less than a high school degree were four times as likely to report a limiting condition than those with a Bachelor’s degree, and their labor force participation rate was less than one third of that among those with a Bachelor’s degree. Whether driven by real or perceived declines in health among prime-age men, health-limitations deserve attention and further examination as a potentially significant driver of men’s retreat from work.
A Safety Net that Subsidizes Non-Work? Over the past half century, federal policymakers have constructed a complex of safety net benefits to help low- income Americans. In 2019, the federal government spent more than $750 billion on cash or near-cash aid for low-income Americans. While this network of federal safety net programs offers crucial support to many Americans in times of need, most benefit programs discourage or even penalize work rather than encouraging it as the primary and only permanent path out of poverty. Studies show employment-reducing effects in Medicaid, federal housing assistance, and SNAP. Countless studies, too, document significant employment reducing effects of Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance—the two major disability assistance programs in the US.
Anti-employment effects of safety net programs usually stem from two structural issues: (1) benefit receipt is not conditioned on work or (2) benefits are reduced rapidly after a certain income threshold, lowering the marginal reward of more employment income. With the exception of a few, most safety net programs suffer from one or both of these deficits. For example, SSDI recipients can earn no more than $1,350 of employment income before losing their benefits. Similarly, given the continued extension of the covid-19 public health emergency, able-bodied SNAP recipients without dependents need not demonstrate any work participation in order to receive full benefits.
The anti-employment effects of federal safety net programs are particularly concerning because the federal government is one of the primary financiers of the work-less lives led by so many men in their prime years. Two-thirds of inactive men report receiving at least one government benefit and 40 percent report receive SSI/SSDI or SNAP. The average non-working prime-age men received nearly $6,000 in government benefits in 2014, compared to just $500 for the average working prime-age man. It is important to keep in mind that official government surveys underestimate actual benefit receipt, so these statistics likely offer a lower-bound of the true reality. Furthermore, analyses by Joseph Price suggest a near doubling in safety net benefit receipt among prime-age men, from 36 percent in 1985 to 63 percent in 2013.
Though data limitations preclude causal conclusions tying the growth of the federal safety net to the growing inactive class of prime-age men, the well-documented work disincentives of many safety net programs combined with the deep reach of these programs into the “NILF” population suggest that the federal government has at the very least helped finance, if not spurred, the current crisis.
While it may be difficult to identify causation within this correlation, what seems uncontroversial to assume, is that the rising rates of benefit claimants in accord with declining rates of labor participation, suggests that these welfare policies are not working. And this is likely to policy makers failing to understand the role social capital plays in finding and keeping work.
Too many of our nation’s antipoverty programs overlook the reality that employment is the best pathway to avoid poverty. Programs may offset short-term material needs while providing no long-term solution. Though well-intentioned, America’s current benefit programs only further isolates non-working men from the crucial pillars that can help them chart a path to a flourishing life.
Reconnecting America’s Men to Work
The range of opportunities for progress in restoring connections between prime-age men and work will look less centralized and much less simplified than instinct might suggest. True progress will require a voluntary partnership between individuals, institutions, and government to generate change for mutual advantage. But federal policy will play a necessary role in this process.
A suite of policy reforms is advisable, including restoring connections between our safety net and work, rethinking the relationship between mental and physical health challenges and work, revitalizing a workforce development system that upholds and forms personal agency in men, integrating practical vocational education options in high school curricula for men who are not college-bound, and seeking to improve the health of prime-age men.
A Work-First Approach to the Safety Net. Federal policymakers should incorporate a “work-first” approach into major social safety net programs, including disability assistance programs, SNAP, Medicaid, housing assistance, and other benefit programs.
Within the topography of non-disability related safety net programs, a combination of work requirements and time limits seem to be the gold standard for reconnecting Americans with work. In 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which introduced a work or work-search requirement for cash welfare recipients as well as time limits for adults without a disability. At the time, the primary challenge was a shockingly low work participation rate among single mothers. In the years that followed welfare reform, the labor force participation rate among never-married mothers jumped 15 percentage points, from 60 to 75 percent. Poverty among single parents was slashed by more than one half, and consumption wellbeing improved substantially.
This experience suggests a successful blueprint exists for connecting other safety net benefits to work. The structure of four major assistance programs lends particularly well to the incorporation of work requirements: cash assistance (TANF), Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance. Some rightly note the administrative complexity of adding work requirements to these programs, as well as the need to carve out sufficient exemptions for disabled adults who are truly unable to work or those who cannot find work amid tight economic conditions.
CBO analyses further suggest that substantial employment gains following such a policy would likely be contingent upon reallocating funding from reduced benefit outlays toward enhanced case management and job placement services for poor Americans. Many leading safety net scholars, including Robert Doar, have noted the important—and often forgotten—role that case managers and social workers can play in helping poor Americans navigate difficult decisions and find a path to sustained employment.
These complicating factors should not dissuade policymakers from seeking to reconnect the safety net to the most promising path out of poverty for men who have fallen out of the labor force—steady, stable employment.
Rethinking the Relationship Between Health Challenges
and Employment. The question of leveraging our nation’s disability insurance programs to encourage the return to work among many prime-age men is inherently more complex, as many adults suffer from chronic conditions that truly prevent them from working. However, the current federal strategy offers the worst of both worlds to disabled Americans: minimal material sustenance and all but barring a path to employment. This only exacerbates material and social hardship among many disabled adults. A better solution is needed. We recommend that, when seeking to address low work participation among disability recipients, policymakers should keep in mind two truths:
First, disability and work incapacity may be related, but they should not be conflated. Many adults who suffer from a physical or mental disability can work and greatly benefit from work.The current anti-employment effects of current US disability policy run directly contrary to the core values of the 1990 American Disabilities Act and many advocacy efforts among disabled Americans, which often seek more and not fewer pathways to work. Technological advancements have opened up new opportunities for jobs that require little to no manual labor and can accommodate physical limitations.
Second, employment itself should be seen as a vehicle for better health, even among Americans with disabilities. Researchers have taken advantage of several natural experiments—including firm closures and return-to-work programs—to study the relationship between work and adult health, generally identifying physical and mental health benefits of work including time structuring, respect from others, ability to afford nutritious foods, etc. While firm closure and unemployment studies do not map perfectly to the experiences of America’s population of men who have been far from the workforce for years, these positive attributes related to work are likely to be absent, therefore, among men who have left the labor force.
PATHWAYS TO EMPLOYMENT
Implementing a work-first approach to disability assistance policies is an invariably complex task. However, several opportunities exist to build pathways to employment for the new class of prime-age adults dependent on SSI and SSDI benefits.
As David Autor and Mark Duggan, and Richard Burkhauser have proposed, policymakers could incentivize employers to invest more in accommodations and rehabilitation for their employees at the early onset of a disability by assigning them a portion of the financial burden for benefits paid to former employees who roll onto SSI or SSDI.
As Nicole Maestas noted in her 2019 review of SSDI, another policy option would be to allow for partial disability benefits. This approach, combined with regular continuing disability reviews and intensive employment and training services could increase opportunities for disability recipients to ease back into the workforce. The obvious downside of this proposal would be an increase in short-term outlays. However, some studies suggest the downward impact on full benefit claims and long-term participation in the program could save taxpayer dollars in the long run.
Lastly, a more fundamental rethinking of how our disability assistance programs treat mental illness is needed. Mental health challenges such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia account for a large share of ongoing disability claims—more than 20 percent of SSDI claims in 2020. Psychiatric literature on best practices for treating mental illness includes employment as an indispensable part of a treatment plan. A growing body of evidence suggests that supportive employment programs could be an effective provision for adults struggling with severe mental illness. This model seeks to connect mental health patients with a job that broadly fits their interests as quickly as possible, often starting with fewer work hours per week before gradually increasing them. Rigorous studies have shown this approach to yield stronger connections to work than traditional vocational training services.
A Nimble Workforce Development System. Where the “demand-
side” forces are currently driving men out of the workforce, a well-integrated workforce development system that is equipped to reskill workers quickly and connect them with job opportunities in a rapidly shifting labor market could go a long way toward preventing labor force dropout from “discouraged” workers. A revamped workforce development would not necessarily reverse the trend of men’s retreat from work, but it could stop the bleeding. As Mason Bishop argues, “we have a New Deal workforce system for an iPhone economy.”
Countless states’ workforce development systems have failed to keep up with crucial data on changing labor market dynamics in regional economies. Several scholars have recommended plausible pathways for states to expand their capacity to collect and disseminate Labor Market Information, and the Department of Labor recently published a comprehensive report outlining possible steps. Ultimately, greater investments are required at both state and federal level to create Labor Market Information systems that gather and disseminate useful data in real time that can match talent with the available jobs in their area that fit their skills and interests.
Brent Orrell argues that, “For both practical and philosophical reasons, the workforce system itself needs to mirror and support this bias toward cultivating personal agency in training and career decisions.”113 For this reason, Orrell recommends expanding funding for Individual Training Accounts—limited-use funds that workers can use toward a training service of their choice at any approved college, trade school, or private reskilling organization. For workers on the fence, access to funding that empowers their own personal agency to develop marketable skills could go a long way toward retaining lower-wage and less educated men in a constantly shifting workforce. If successful, ITA expansion could be a model for future policy reform efforts in other crucial government services. For example, legislators could open access to ITAs for SSI and SSDI applicants who might be better served reskilling and receiving training for a job that can accommodate their activity limitations.
Integrating Vocational Education in Traditional K-12 Offerings.
Sparking a generational shift away from the current “college-for-all” framework that dominates K–12 schooling could spark a generational shift in work participation.115 Federal and state educational resources currently overwhelmingly focus on preparing K–12 student for four-year college programs. Federal funding for higher education total $150 billion per year today, while only $1.9 billion is devoted to vocational education at the high school and post-secondary levels. The problem is, only about one-third of Millennial men have a college degree, and the other 70 percent are missing out on crucial opportunities to get a head start on developing meaningful pathways into the workforce.
Federal policymakers should work toward reallocating educational funds to meet the vocational needs of each group—including young men who are not on the college track. Specifically, allocating fund toward a renaissance of career and technical education (CTE) offerings in high schools could spark a generational renewal in career preparedness of young men who might otherwise find themselves in the “NILF” category in adulthood. Research evaluating Career Academies, for example, has found that young men who participate in these high school apprenticeship programs earn more than similar peers who do not.
A shift in federal funding structures could realistically spark the development of new schools, with diverse educational focuses. Promising new high schools such as Build Up Birmingham, which places students in apprenticeship training for half of their high school experience, could signal a future in which the variety of educational options available to students truly matches the variety of their skills and interests.
As recommended in the Social Capital Campaign family stability report, the ultimate goal should be a national workforce education initiative that prepares one third of adults for the middle skills market — funding educational models that prepare students to enter the workforce after high school with real value in the labor market.
CONCLUSION
The slow but consistent separation of prime-age men from the core institution of work is one of the great challenges of this century. For all the remarkable triumphs of the country in the last century—on the world stage, in economic prosperity, and technological progress—a silent crisis has developed almost unnoticed.
Today, more men than ever are sitting on the sidelines of the workforce—unable to access a key source of social and personal flourishing. The nature of this great crisis is perplexing—it questions traditional assumptions about the causes of labor force participation and derails many of the overly-simplistic “demand-side” explanations offered by various social scientists recently.
Reintegrating our lost workforce with paid employment would require government to work in harmony with mediating institutions to prompt a renewed cultural emphasis on work. However, setting the right conditions through policy reform is a necessary part of the solution.
Federal policymakers can start by reconnecting our nation’s most important safety net programs to work and leveraging the structures of our disability assistance programs to remove barriers for disabled adults to reenter the workforce. Policymakers should also reconsider the relationship between poor health, disability, and work—opting for a more accurate approach that views employment as a crucial contributor to good health.
Federal and state efforts should concentrate on sparking a revitalized workforce development system that empowers workers with crucial real-time information about the job availabilities in their regions and reinforces personal agency through flexible ITAs for reskilling. Our education can and must prepare all students—not just those on track to
earn a college degree—for high-quality, stable employment. A national course-correction is needed—one that shifts funding and resources toward a plethora of diverse new educational models that mirrors the skills and need of students.
America faces many challenges to her economic might today, but a dwindling workforce does not have to be a challenge that carries on for generations. We can and must course- correct. Now is the time to align federal and state policy toward a future where all who might benefit from employment have access to ample opportunities for a stable job and earned success.
Peyton Roth is a policy researcher who lives and works in Washington, D.C. He studies human agency and how interactions with core institutions shape key life decisions and outcomes. He has produced original research on topics ranging from family formation to paid- leave policy. He has been published in National Review and The American Conservative and is an Adviser to the Social Capital Campaign. Peyton earned a B.S. in political science and chemistry from Furman University, where he graduated summa cum laude.
