Men at Work … or Not

 

shutterstock_284883917We’ve heard a great deal this campaign year about the plight of the working class. The left tells a story about the middle class being destroyed by predatory millionaires and billionaires who are soaking up 99 percent of the “income gains” (as if national income were one giant Big Gulp and the one percent managed to nab the biggest straws).

Donald Trump tells a different story. The jobs that once provided a stable middle-class income have been outsourced. If people are unemployed, it’s because the factories are all in Guangzhou or Juarez. Trump promises that he will bring those jobs back.

Of course, neither Trump nor anyone else can bring those manufacturing jobs back because they weren’t lost primarily to foreign competition. Manufacturing jobs (as opposed to manufacturing outputs, which continue to rise) have been in steep decline since 1947, mostly due to automation and efficiency. Service jobs have been increasing, and as AEI economist Mark Perry notes, the US trade surplus in services vis à vis the rest of the world (including China, Japan, Mexico, and the EU) has shown a 450 percent increase since 2005 and continues to grow. (He winks: “Are we killing them and laughing at them?”)

You would imagine that if people were unemployed because the one percenters have hoarded all the wealth, or because foreigners have absconded with all the factories, the unemployed would express a desire to work. Yet a report from the President’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) finds that only 16 percent of prime age (25-54) men who were not in the labor force in 2015 said they would like to be working. Many are living off relatives and disability payments.

Most adults are in the labor force (88 percent of men and 75 percent of women). But particularly for men, the labor force participation rate has been declining steadily. It was close to 98 percent in 1955. As the CEA reports, non-work is associated with a host of troubles: “Job loss is connected to increased body weight … Unemployment is also associated with lower overall well-being and reported happiness … For parents, job loss is associated with negative consequences for children … and increased reliance on Unemployment Insurance and social assistance in the long term.”

So far, so good. The President’s economists are identifying the worrying trends in non-work among lesser-educated men. These findings follow other scholarly work such as that by Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case, who published a paper last fall showing that death rates among white, middle-aged Americans with high school educations have increased over the past 15 years, while the death rates for other ethnic groups have declined. Alcohol and drug poisoning lead the causes.

What the CEA does not grapple with is the fact that while men’s employment and wages have been declining, women’s have been increasing. Women’s labor force participation rates have declined since 2001, but not nearly as much as men’s. As David Autor and Melanie Wasserman of MIT have shown, women at every level of education except high school dropouts have seen their wages rise since 1979. But men in every category except college graduates have lost ground.

It’s likely that the decline in brawny jobs due to automation has hurt men more than women. But these trends have been very long term and don’t explain why men have not been as adept as women in adjusting to changes in the jobs landscape. It also does not explain why women are outpacing men at every level of education from high school graduation on up. This is new.

In Wayward Sons, Autor and Wasserman, unlike the president’s CEA, have looked beyond the usual explanations (de-unionization, globalization, automation, immigration) for what ails American men and examined the biggest change of the past 50 years – family life. While growing up in single parent homes handicaps both girls and boys, it’s more devastating for boys. They lag in school, are less ambitious, and are less likely to be gainfully employed when they reach adulthood. A significant number also commit crimes and wind up in prison.

With more young men failing to thrive, the pool of marriageable men for young women to consider thus becomes smaller, and the pattern of women raising children without fathers is repeated in a pernicious spiral.

Unsurprisingly, the CEA offers Democratic boilerplate: infrastructure spending projects, expanding paid family leave, increasing the minimum wage, and reforming the criminal justice system.

There is no silver bullet for a problem as complex as the fading fortunes of men. But every proposal should start with the question: Will this discourage or encourage family formation and stability? That clearly, is key for men’s well being – which in turn affects women, and the next generation.

Published in Economics
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  1. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Mona,

    For forty years the middle class has been relentlessly pursued by a dark force. By accident, Brexit has ripped the mask off. Global Governance Bureaucrats at EU, Washington DC, and around the World have relentlessly pursued policies destructive to the economic base of middle-class workers and the social base of middle-class families.

    They have fomented strife between the classes, races, and sexes. They have manufactured a fantasy crisis in the environment to distract all from their relentless wrecking. Small business is to be devoured by big business & government as hyper-regulation makes it impossible for small business to thrive.

    Mr. Trump is as subtle as dynamite. I am ready to try anything.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #1
  2. She Member
    She
    @She

    Mona Charen:It’s likely that the decline in brawny jobs due to automation has hurt men more than women. . .

    And then there is the matter of ‘jobs Americans just won’t do,’ even though automation really isn’t a factor, at least yet.

    Like this one, which is a matter of concern if you live where I do and you’re still trying to do you bit for US agriculture and the wool market.

    I shear my own now (learned from the great Joe Bill, and his son Willie, in about 1990), as it’s almost impossible to get someone to come and do it, even though the outlay to set up in business isn’t huge.  But it’s just too hard.  Too much work.  Dirty.  Not enough money (although if you’re good, you can still do pretty well).

    It makes me very sad to see the adulation and respect that ‘we’ give to entertainers and celebrities of any sort, regardless of their talent or their intrinsic personal worth, just because they’re famous, and yet people like Calvin McCutcheon (who is someone I want on my side when Armageddon arrives) are looked down on, and their jobs dismissed as lesser, because they don’t require a formal education and come with a certificate to hang on the wall.

    Wait a minute.  I do have a certificate to hang on the wall, right next to the one that says I was a terrific English major at Duquesne University (Oh.  That one’s not hanging on the wall either?).  The more important sheep and Angora goat shearing one is signed by Joe Bill his own self.  Hang on, it’s here somewhere . . .

    • #2
  3. DocJay Inactive
    DocJay
    @DocJay

    The regulations and burdens on my small business have just built and built over the years. I have no question about whether I’d try it again but wow, it’s a nightmare. Doubt either candidate helps me out with too much regulatory government. One is sure to worsen it and the other likely.

    • #3
  4. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Mona, what we are hearing are excuses , and not very good ones at that, why male unemployment is at an all time historic low.

    To echo Doc and Jay, our unconstitutionally grotesque regulatory state is devouring jobs, particularly good jobs and manufacturing jobs.  The automation excuse is a poor one. Many manufacturers have simply left or have folded because our government wants to punish them – for being competitors to our corporate overlords and  for offending our Leftist Elites for being godforsaken heathen capitalists   who dare to actually make actual profits.  Manufacturing personnel costs are often a small portion of expenses- it is the other expenses incurred by our regulatory taxes that are the killer. Also, when a manufacturer dies or moves away, it is not just the manufacturing floor jobs that are lost, it is also very often jobs in design, research, management, shipping, marketing, accounting, finance and other ancillary jobs that are lost as well.

    You also fail to mention that our Universities now take roughly one third more women that men.  Our Universities and School systems are thoroughly anti- male, anti-conservative and anti- religious. Our government with it’s host of anti-male regulations and our education establishment have stacked the deck against men for decades.

    When you almost make it a crime to be a male by criminalizing typical male behavior, and take  away all the industries and jobs that employ men, one should naturally expect male employment to decline  drastically. And it has.

    • #4
  5. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Oops. I meant “employment” instead of “unemployment ” in my previous post’s first sentence.

    • #5
  6. Petty Boozswha Inactive
    Petty Boozswha
    @PettyBoozswha

    At the time of the revolution it took 95 farmers to support the 5% that lived in cities in this country. Even when Harry Truman gave up walking behind a donkey with a plow to become President, over 40% of the population still lived on farms. Today less than 1% of the population are farmers, and 19 out of 20 of those are hobby farmers plowing the tax code and the Department of Agriculture for subsidies.

    With manufacturing following the same trajectory, we need to structure an economy that values work by men. My ideas will not surprise you – no more unskilled immigration. Let supply and demand raise the cost of labor for landscaping services,  dishwashers and maintenance staff that are currently jobs Americans don’t want to do. Concurrently get rid of the sleazy lawyers on daytime TV that will get you disability for punching your boss in the mouth [explosive temperament disorder] or if you feel really bummed out about having to get up to go to work in the morning [anxiety disorders are up several hundred percent in recent years].

    • #6
  7. Z in MT Member
    Z in MT
    @ZinMT

    If you pay people not to work, don’t be surprised when they don’t work.

    The breakdown of the family is a big reason why men are doing badly. Men are barbarians that are civilized by the institution of marriage. You weaken marriage you weaken men.

    Speaking of George Gilder, his latest book The Scandal of Money makes a very good case that fiat monetarism has been the key issue causing the slow down in productivity growth. Productivity growth being the generator of middle income wealth.

    • #7
  8. Big Green Inactive
    Big Green
    @BigGreen

    Unsk:Mona, what we are hearing are excuses , and not very good ones at that, why male unemployment is at an all time historic low.

    To echo Doc and Jay, our unconstitutionally grotesque regulatory state is devouring jobs, particularly good jobs and manufacturing jobs. The automation excuse is a poor one. Many manufacturers have simply left or have folded because our government wants to punish them – for being competitors to our corporate overlords and for offending our Leftist Elites for being godforsaken heathen capitalists who dare to actually make actual profits. Manufacturing personnel costs are often a small portion of expenses- it is the other expenses incurred by our regulatory taxes that are the killer.

    You also fail to mention that our Universities now take roughly one third more women that men.

    If automatic is just an excuse, how do you explain the fact the manufacturing output, in real terms, I’d the highest it has ever been in the history of the US?  I don’t disagree with you at all on the burden of the regulatory state, but automatic has had a much, much bigger impact on manufacturing jobs than has either trade or businesses just deciding to fold up shop.  It’s not even close.

    As as for university admittance, are you sure that more high school females are qualified  than males are?  You seem to thnk it should be 50/50 just because that is the rough relative proportions in society…that’s leftist thinking.

    • #8
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