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I was curious about this too. Age 25-54 men in US: 52.3 million. Currently 11.4% are out of workforce, compared to 8.5% in 2000. 2013 statistics: "As of last

I was curious about this too. Age 25-54 men in US: 52.3 million. Currently 11.4% are out of workforce, compared to 8.5% in 2000. 2013 statistics: "As of last September, more than 1.6 million military members who’d been deployed in what’s classified as the global war on terror – in Iraq and Afghanistan, primarily – had transitioned to veteran status, VA records show. Of those, about 1 million were from active-duty service and about 675,000 from Reserve or guard deployments. And of those, about 670,000 veterans have been awarded disability status connected to their military service. Another 100,000 have their initial claims pending, according to a November VA analysis." (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article24746680.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...) So let's generously round up and say 0.8 million due to military service (majority are men). At most 1.5% of the rise could be attributed to military action. (obviously asking the question: why did the previous wars see so little effect on removal from workforce compared to the present ones?). However, the major rises in removal from workforce seem correlated with the economic depressions. The biggest question is: why are men getting knocked out entirely? Painkillers, military service, and economic recessions have all been around many times since the 1950's. They aren't the reason. My hunch is the loss of valuing community and family in US culture. With no reason/motivation to work, no one depending on them, men just drop out.

Grishnakh 10y ago
>My hunch is the loss of valuing community and family in US culture. With no reason/motivation to work, no one depending on them, men just drop out. I think there's a lot to this. Notice also that the divorce rate is high, and worse, the rate of people staying single is rising a lot too: many people just aren't bothering to get married any more. I'm back in the dating pool, and I'm finding a LOT of urban women these days who are in their 30s and even 40s and never got married, and after trying to date some of them it's my opinion that for most of them, they're college-educated and their professions and girlfriends have kept them busy all this time (plus lots of foreign travel it seems), and they just don't feel like they need a relationship, and I'm guessing when they get horny they just go to a neighborhood bar and pick up someone. Anyway, after dating some of them it seems to me they're all stuck holding out for Mr. Perfect, and want someone who looks and dresses like a GQ model, can run a marathon, drives a BMW, and lives right across the street from them downtown. It's so bad that many of these women are finally realizing they want to experience motherhood and are getting IVF to do it, without bothering to have a husband first. I met one woman on Tinder who was a little over 40, and told me in the very first phone conversation how she had already tried one round of IVF! WTF? Notice also that women are going to college much more than men now (60% vs 40%), and women with any brains at all are going to college and moving into the cities. Men who aren't college educated don't do the same, so now we're having parts of the country with severe imbalances between single men and women. There's a ridiculous number of single women in NYC, for instance.

Grishnakh 10y ago

>My hunch is the loss of valuing community and family in US culture. With no reason/motivation to work, no one depending on them, men just drop out. I think there's a lot to this. Notice also that the divorce rate is high, and worse, the rate of people staying single is rising a lot too: many people just aren't bothering to get married any more. I'm back in the dating pool, and I'm finding a LOT of urban women these days who are in their 30s and even 40s and never got married, and after trying to date some of them it's my opinion that for most of them, they're college-educated and their professions and girlfriends have kept them busy all this time (plus lots of foreign travel it seems), and they just don't feel like they need a relationship, and I'm guessing when they get horny they just go to a neighborhood bar and pick up someone. Anyway, after dating some of them it seems to me they're all stuck holding out for Mr. Perfect, and want someone who looks and dresses like a GQ model, can run a marathon, drives a BMW, and lives right across the street from them downtown. It's so bad that many of these women are finally realizing they want to experience motherhood and are getting IVF to do it, without bothering to have a husband first. I met one woman on Tinder who was a little over 40, and told me in the very first phone conversation how she had already tried one round of IVF! WTF? Notice also that women are going to college much more than men now (60% vs 40%), and women with any brains at all are going to college and moving into the cities. Men who aren't college educated don't do the same, so now we're having parts of the country with severe imbalances between single men and women. There's a ridiculous number of single women in NYC, for instance.