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- The share of prime working-age US men with a job has declined from about 96% in the 1950s to 86%.
- The effects of recessions, globalization, and disabilities can partially explain the decline.
- But there are also several other reasons men aren't working like they used to.
America's working-age men are employed at much lower rates than they used to be, and a combination of factors — from recessions to globalization to rising addiction rates — could be playing a role.
In the early 1950s, as many as 96% of prime working-age American men, who were between the ages of 25 and 54, had full-time or part-time jobs, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of March, about 86% of working-age men were employed, and this cohort's employment rate has lagged behind many developed countries in recent years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found.
As such, many men are struggling to support themselves financially. And mental-health experts say the longer people are out of the workforce, the higher the chances they'll experience mental-health challenges.
Here are a few factors that could explain what's happening.
It could be about recessions
Since the 1950s, whenever the US economy fell into a recession, men's employment rate tended to suffer a longer-lasting blow.
When the economy entered a recession in 1953, the share of prime-age men with jobs dropped from 96% to 92.8% and never fully recovered to the prerecession level, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This pattern repeated in many of the recessions that followed. During the Great Recession of 2008, the prime-age male employment rate fell from 88% to 80.6% — and hasn't reached above 86.7% since. The pandemic recession may prove to be an exception: After falling to as low as 78% in 2020, men's employment rate has nearly recovered to its pre-pandemic level.
"In recent decades, declines in labor-force participation have tended to accompany recessions," Abigail Wozniak, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told Business Insider. "Participation dips and then does not fully recover."
Why have recessions had such a lasting effect on working men? Even when the economy recovers, some of the jobs that were lost never return — or pay as well as they used to. Given that men have historically dominated the workforce, they've borne the brunt of these job losses.
Why have recessions appeared to have such a lasting impact on working men? Even when the economy recovers, some occupations don't reach prior employment levels — or pay as well as they used to. Given that men have historically dominated the workforce, they've borne the brunt of these impacts.
"If the opportunities available after a downturn pay less than the old opportunities, workers may decide not to work as much despite their lower income," Wozniak said.
And the longer someone is out of the workforce, the more disconnected from the workforce they can become, research has found.
The strong employment-recovery rate after the pandemic recession could be due to the unique nature of this downturn — which tanked an otherwise healthy economy. Some economists believe that increased federal COVID-19 spending allowed the economy to bounce back better this go-round.
The male unemployment rate is low when compared to past decades. But this measure doesn't account for men who have, for a multitude of reasons, stopped looking for work altogether. It's these men who are responsible for America's male employment decline.
In 1950, about 97% of prime-working-age men had a job or were actively looking for work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of January, that figure had fallen to roughly 89%.
Many men with disabilities aren't working
In 1960, roughly 455,000 workers collected Social Security disability benefits. In 2022, more than 7.6 million people, including about 1.3 million men between the ages of 25 and 54, collected disability benefits.
Some of this can be attributed to a growing and aging population and the expansion of these benefits over time. However, a challenging job market has also played a role.
"What drives people to apply for disability is, in many cases, the repeated loss of work and inability to find new employment," David Autor, an economist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Washington Post in 2017. "Many people who are applying would say, 'Look, I would like to work, but no one would employ me.'"
In 2023, about 44% of total men and women with a disability between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job, compared to roughly 83% of those without a disability, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which determines whether someone has a disability through a series of questions.
In a 2022 analysis of Census data by the San Francisco Fed, nearly 40% of prime-working-age men cited disability or illness as the reason they weren't working.
In more recent decades, addiction rates tied to the opioid epidemic have also sidelined some men from the workforce.
In recent years, the rise of remote work and historically high job openings have helped more people with disabilities find employment. In 2023, nearly 23% of Americans with a disability were employed — the largest share on record since data collection began in 2008, according to the BLS.
Other theories: Education, incarceration, and stay-at-home dads
There are other potential explanations for the decline of men in the workforce, including the rising share of men attending graduate school and more men working as stay-at-home dads or caring for elderly parents.
Changing demand for jobs, driven in part by globalization and automation, has also hurt the job prospects of many men, particularly those employed in the manufacturing industry. More employers began seeking out candidates with higher levels of education, which made it difficult for some men in the job market.
What's more, men now account for less than half of college enrollees. Among Americans 25 and older, the unemployment rate of people with only a high school diploma is 3.9%, compared to 2.2% for those whose highest educational attainment is a bachelor's degree, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In recent years, some companies have become more open to hiring candidates who don't have a college degree. There's also been job growth in industries that historically haven't required degrees, like manufacturing and food services. But finding a job without a degree — and one that pays well — can still be a challenge.
In 2016, the Harvard economist Jason Furman, then the chair of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, attributed the decline of prime-age working men largely to the "reduction in the demand for unskilled labor" driven by technological change, adding that men without jobs tended not to have a college education.
Additionally, he said most of these men weren't spending more time on childcare than the average man and weren't relying on working women to pay the bills — suggesting they weren't stay-at-home dads, for instance.
Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told Business Insider that a stagnant minimum wage and falling unionization rates have contributed to lower pay for some workers. The lower the pay, the less motivated some people might be to take a job.
Some more under-the-radar factors could also be playing a role.
Rising incarceration rates in recent decades could be making it difficult for some men to find work once they return to society, Gould said. Incarcerated men aren't counted in government labor-force statistics, but when they are released, their struggles to find work could depress the average male employment rate.
In the past, many men opted for careers in the military, but there are fewer of these jobs than there used to be. In 1970, there were over 3 million full-time federal government military employees — as of 2022, there were less than 1.5 million.
"Post-World War II, we've seen pretty big declines since the late 60s and throughout the 1990s in terms of federal employment in the military," Gould said.
While the military is actively seeking recruits, it appears to be a less attractive path nowadays for many men — the Army, Navy, and Air Force have struggled to meet recruitment goals.
Research by the Federal Reserve economist John M. Coglianese published in 2018 found that a rise of "in-and-outs" — men who temporarily leave the labor force but ultimately return, was responsible for a large chunk of men's declining working rates.
And of course, some lucky prime-age men aren't working because they've had a lot of financial success and already retired.
With so many factors at play, it's difficult to tease out which issues may affect the number of men in the workforce the most — and what kind of policy decisions could reverse the trend.
"I think that ideally, we would have jobs for everybody who wants one," Gould said.
Are you a man between the ages of 25 and 54 who's not in the workforce? Are you willing to share your story? If so, reach out to this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.