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I feel like this article muddies so much of what is cause and what is effect. It pushes the idea that there is an "age-old male quest for a paying job", whereas

I feel like this article muddies so much of what is cause and what is effect. It pushes the idea that there is an "age-old male quest for a paying job", whereas I don't think men or women or animals or anything has ever had that as their primary objective. The pressure has been to meet basic needs, meet societal obligations and expectations, meet peer pressure and similar outside forces that lead someone to take up a 9-to-5 job. I think it's natural as those forces have weakened for this to be the consequence. It's become easier to meet basic needs, gender roles have become less rigid and there's not the same expectation of a male breadwinner, and society no longer demands everyone has children. "One manifestation of regression, Donald Trump, is perhaps perverse evidence that some of his army of angry men are at least healthily unhappy about the loss of meaning, self-esteem and masculinity that is a consequence of chosen and protracted idleness." Maybe they are, but just taking up a "pointless" job isn't going to change that. Without the sense that there's something bigger that they're working towards, being a Gap Factory Store employee in itself (as per the header image) isn't going to give any kind of meaning. People don't work bad jobs for themselves, they work it for something bigger. Family, society, some kind of grand purpose. Can just look at that Congo cobalt mining piece by the WaPo to see what motivates people to endure horrific work. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...

candiodari 10y ago
Well labour participation is down across the board, regardless of gender roles. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-pa... It's down for men: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.MA.ZS?locations=US http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.MA.ZS?locati... It's down for women: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?locations=US http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?locati... White/Black/Chinese/Hispanic ... all down. There are racial/gender differences, for instance, men and blacks seem to be worse off than the other groups, women and Chinese people are better off (as are immigrants in general), but still down. Of course you only get to be an immigrant if you have a job, so not much of a surprise there. It's down across the board. The only exception I could find is people who should be pensioners (men 55+), or at least near pension, but clearly people are hesitant to start their pension. Which brings the real question. How can it be in the US that unemployment is essentially fixed while the number of people with actual jobs varies so wildly ? The only explanation I can find is that the government must be actively denying unemployment benefits to people who are in fact unemployed, or otherwise fail to count them. I am curious to understand what the actual mechanism is here. I have heard that the US essentially fails to count long-term unemployed people as unemployed, but I haven't put enough effort into verifying this. If this is true, maybe we should assess what the real US unemployment rate is. It's the reported unemployment rate, plus let's say 80% of the jobs lost since 2001, which comes to about 8.9%. Add another percent to account for people who study in order to avoid looking for a job, or who've otherwise resumed study because of getting laid off, and we're close to 10%. That would mean that what the Fed says is nonsense, and the reason there is considerable slack in the labor market (no wage growth) is simply that at this rate, the US labor market will only have recovered from the 2008 losses around 2022, nor was it recovered from the 2000-2001 job losses in 2008. The odds of a recession between now and then making the problem worse, however, seems to me to be essentially a certainty. The story here is wrong to focus on men. Men have it slightly worse than women, but not much. The problem is widespread and has little or nothing to do with gender.

candiodari 10y ago

Well labour participation is down across the board, regardless of gender roles. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-pa... It's down for men: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.MA.ZS?locations=US http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.MA.ZS?locati... It's down for women: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?locations=US http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?locati... White/Black/Chinese/Hispanic ... all down. There are racial/gender differences, for instance, men and blacks seem to be worse off than the other groups, women and Chinese people are better off (as are immigrants in general), but still down. Of course you only get to be an immigrant if you have a job, so not much of a surprise there. It's down across the board. The only exception I could find is people who should be pensioners (men 55+), or at least near pension, but clearly people are hesitant to start their pension. Which brings the real question. How can it be in the US that unemployment is essentially fixed while the number of people with actual jobs varies so wildly ? The only explanation I can find is that the government must be actively denying unemployment benefits to people who are in fact unemployed, or otherwise fail to count them. I am curious to understand what the actual mechanism is here. I have heard that the US essentially fails to count long-term unemployed people as unemployed, but I haven't put enough effort into verifying this. If this is true, maybe we should assess what the real US unemployment rate is. It's the reported unemployment rate, plus let's say 80% of the jobs lost since 2001, which comes to about 8.9%. Add another percent to account for people who study in order to avoid looking for a job, or who've otherwise resumed study because of getting laid off, and we're close to 10%. That would mean that what the Fed says is nonsense, and the reason there is considerable slack in the labor market (no wage growth) is simply that at this rate, the US labor market will only have recovered from the 2008 losses around 2022, nor was it recovered from the 2000-2001 job losses in 2008. The odds of a recession between now and then making the problem worse, however, seems to me to be essentially a certainty. The story here is wrong to focus on men. Men have it slightly worse than women, but not much. The problem is widespread and has little or nothing to do with gender.