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I find this fairly astounding. The typical stay-at-home parent is the mother and while it's getting closer to parity I don't think it's anywhere near even. Fo
by deeg 7y ago
I find this fairly astounding. The typical stay-at-home parent is the mother and while it's getting closer to parity I don't think it's anywhere near even. For that reason alone I would expect more men in the work force. What are men doing if not working? On disability? Homeless? Retiring earlier?
- tmpz22 7y agoWell, it may be interesting to look at what industries ballooned during this time. Video games, weed, online sexual services, ...
- klaudius 7y agohttps://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-young-men-dont-work/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-young-...
- vixen99 7y ago"Perhaps one should not dwell too long, however, on the question of what type of leisure low-skill young men are engaging in. The more important fact remains that leisure is slowly replacing work in their lives, as immigrants replace them in the labor force."
- earlINmeyerkeg 7y agoThat is probably the one part of the article they really should've made more prominent. Yet they didn't. They hammered it home that videogames and young men not getting married and having 12 kids is the problem. Maybe culturally getting married is incredibly more time consuming and difficult than it used to be? I mean I'm reading George Orwell's Burmese days and the main character was trying to propose (and the girl wanted him to) within 2 weeks of knowing eachother! Granted it's a book, but that doesn't sound outside the realms of normalcy, especially in Burma during the 1920's where there were like 1/1000 ratio of white person to native.
- watwut 7y agoIt did used to be normal to marry after extremely short time from our point of view. And divorce was harder. There were consequences for that through - partner who hate each other, violence, abuse (verbal, emotional, physical). Alcoholism.
- magduf 7y ago>There were consequences for that through - partner who hate each other, violence, abuse (verbal, emotional, physical). Alcoholism. Yeah, the people who pine for the "good old days" when people married for life always leave this part out.
- mywittyname 7y agoYet, they always seem to remember what milkmen and secretaries were for.
- earlINmeyerkeg 7y agoAbusive MEN in particular. Especially radical christians where divorce is stigmatized. It's like they take it as a free pass to just be hateful person. Honestly my dad more than anything made marriage seem worse than it could be that I figured if that's the worst case scenario, hoping for the best isn't even worth the gamble.
- earlINmeyerkeg 7y agoI totally agree and don't think I'm idolizing the past. It's just a different world today and the culture has not caught up with reality.
- riversflow 7y agoWhy is this downvoted? Insofar as I understand economics, it’s a factual reality. The middle class and up are benefitting from immigration driving down the price of food and services in this country. If you’re a low-wage-earning-potential male, given our levels of inequality, why would you want to be a wage slave if you don’t have to? You aren’t going to significantly improve your lot in life by throwing 40+ hours a week at a job that barely pays the bills. It makes you feel like a loser doing the work, and you don’t get to bury that feeling in anything, as you spend all your money just getting by.
- downerending 7y agoI'm seeing a lot of this in my extended family. If society isn't telling you that you have a primary role in creating and supporting a family, and that you're necessary for the future of society itself, it turns out that you need a lot less money to survive, and you have a lot more time on your hands.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoI'm part of the problem I suppose, in so much as one can call it a problem. I gave up dating a decade ago because being in a relationship was not necessary for my life goals and dating was a pain in the ass, plan to semi-retire early with a relatively minimalist lifestyle and part time job, etc.
- arkh 7y agoWhen you don't have someone to spend your money to keep up with the Joneses you suddenly need a lot less: less space, less home decoration, less clothes, less going out for food, a smaller ride.
- magduf 7y agoYep, you "need" a lot less money when you don't have someone insisting that you buy her a diamond ring, a BMW, designer clothes, a big house, maid service, give 10% of your income to some church, etc.
- belorn 7y agoI dislike this kind of cheap generalization which only look skin deep and don't even try to find common behavior between genders. Young men spend about an 2 hours on games per day, and the numbers for young women is much lower. Young women however spend about 2 hours more on their phones per day more than men. Something seems very similar here if we look at the two activities together rather then in isolation. I would instead ask what gendered benefit men get from gaming, and women from doing social activities on their phones, and I would guess the answer has something to do with inter-gender competition and status.
- watwut 7y ago> I would guess the answer has something to do with inter-gender competition and status And simply socialization. Gaming is socialization for many male gamers - it is their primary or only social circle and friends. It is the main thing they talk about even in person (what tv used to be).
- magduf 7y agoExactly: this is what I've found with my younger coworkers. I played video games a lot when I was young, but it wasn't that much of a social thing because the internet wasn't commonly available (we had BBSes) and the games were all single-player DOS or console (NES/SNES) games. Now it seems video games are a social outlet for men under 30, and as you said it's what they talk about in person a lot too, unlike TV.
- naravara 7y ago>Young women however spend about 2 hours more on their phones per day more than men What does "on their phones" mean? This is like saying they spend time "reading books." There are good books and bad books. There are edifying and educational books and pulpy trash books. Just saying "books" says nothing about the productivity.
- earlINmeyerkeg 7y agoYou know, it'd be nice if they'd look at the cultural aspects of gaming as opposed to just assuming all videogames are bad. It's like being in the 1920's criticizing someone spending time reading as opposed to working in a mill. But what can you expect from a clearly biased news source that, while possibly not wrong, is likely not going to give any benefit of the doubt to people who live life differently from the "good 'ol christian boy" fashion.
- dfxm12 7y agoNo one knows exactly why this is happening, though declining demand for low-skill work seems to be a factor. What happens as this continues to decline?
- Enginerrrd 7y agoNot sure, but historically large numbers of unemployed young men has not been a good thing for societal stability.
- irrational 7y agoIndia and China both have a problem with large numbers of unemployed or under employed young men. I bring that up because recently there has been lots of talk about WWIII, but many people say that China, for example, would stay out of it. But, what if they saw it as a solution to their abundance of young men problem? Yikes.
- swalsh 7y agoI think it's a very reasonable concern, making matters worse their one child policy has shifted the demographic towards a higher percentage of men. In Polygamous societies, civil war is very frequent (meaning men without a chance to find a woman find ways to vent often through violence). Add to that, Chinia is a very fragile state economically. Their banks are extremely overleveraged. This is a historically dangerous situation, and that's not even accounting for the newly minted authoritarian dictator.
- xenihn 7y agoThe article specifies payroll positions. I don't know what that means exactly, but I assume it would discount sharing-economy jobs (are we still calling them that?).
- Bartweiss 7y agoIt excludes "unincorporated self-employed" people, which I think covers much of the gig economy. Even more relevantly, it means many construction workers, most painters, etc. are excluded.
- lopmotr 7y agoSome are being "proprietors, private household employees, unpaid volunteers, farm employees and the unincorporated self-employed." From a link somebody else posted https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/july/nonfarm-payrolls-why-farmers-not-included https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/july/nonfarm-payr... Unincorporated self-employed sounds like tradesmen, laborers, and some kinds of professionals which is a lot of men.
- Gunax 7y agoand uber drivers.
- Bartweiss 7y agoI went looking, and found that "unincorporated self-employed" is exactly as you say, and is 2/3 male. Farm employees are roughly 3/4 male. Soldiers (~90% male) are also excluded. "Nonfarm payrolls" was never meant to be a gender-balanced stat, it just excludes the hardest to track jobs. Which is fine for comparison over time, but makes 50% a meaningless metric.
- munk-a 7y agoI wonder if women are tending toward holding multiple jobs more often than men - and since women live longer on average they may simply be working more years of their lives then men.
- epicureanideal 7y agoApparently this was also true in 2009 and 2010 or at least for parts of those years based on the graph in the article. Also, it doesn't seem to distinguish between part-time and full-time. So a mother working part-time when her kids are at school would count the same as a full-time worker.
- phkahler 7y ago>> What are men doing if not working? On disability? Homeless? Retiring earlier? Some are living in their parents basement until they're 30 to 40. It has been hypothesized that with the breakdown of families in the US, men are giving up, and that includes efforts to build a stable foundation for their family. See MGTOW but dont read too much, it can be kind of depressing.
- bmarquez 7y agoPurely anecdotal, but some men I know who haven't started families* are coasting along and are less aggressive to seek career opportunities. Uber, part-time work, etc. Why put your nose to the grindstone if you don't need to provide anymore? *either by choice or because they don't live up to society's standards (e.g. hypergamy)
- bitL 7y agoDo you think US is moving towards Japan? I.e. a significant population of herbivore men (60%?) that get no benefit from associating with women, losing this motivational signal and dropping out of society?
- watwut 7y agoThere might be also factor of women not getting benefit from associating with men. You can't assume that all decisions were made by males only.
- bitL 7y agoI think it's both; I spent some time in Kyoto and have clearer perspective. Both genders there grew apart from each other, pursuing different, incompatible goals, with huge cumulative effects on society.
- magduf 7y agoI've seen a few too many women where they honestly are better off when they don't have a male romantic partner: the men they choose end up being a burden to them. For younger women, it's because they keep choosing men who just cause them problems and can't support themselves. For older women, there's a common pattern where the man dies very quickly when his wife dies, but if the man dies first, the wife can live many years or even decades because now she's free, and doesn't have to take care of him. Honestly, the whole 2-married-partner relationship thing seems to only work out well in a small minority of cases.
- iagovar 7y agoDepressed, committing suicide or just doing nothing. But apparently nobody cares.
- billfruit 7y agoOr being in prison.
- wait_a_minute 7y agoMen do in fact get more prison time for the same crimes when compared with women!
- magduf 7y agoWhile that's most likely true, it only accounts for a very small amount of the gender imbalance. In reality, men simply choose to commit violent crimes, or get involved in violent criminal careers, far more often than women.
- jaywalk 7y agoNot only does nobody care, but some celebrate it.
- uncle_j 7y agoWhy does it have to be even? Why does it matter? Equal Outcome != Equality of Opportunity. Unfortunately the two are often conflated in an attempt to imply there is some form of discrimination taking place by people with nefarious motives.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- closeparen 7y agoThis the sort of question economists study, and reading their output may be more informative than forum comments. Keyword is "declining labor force participation rate."
- 40acres 7y agoA lot of them are on disability or in jail.
- wyldfire 7y ago> What are men doing if not working? On disability? Homeless? Retiring earlier? The article claims: > ... close to 100% of working-age men used to participate in back in the 1950s. Now that figure is 89%, and had been falling up until 2014. Economists cite multiple reasons: lower demand and wages for unskilled uneducated workers, retiring baby boomers, and an opioid crisis that disproportionately affects men.
- watwut 7y agoPeople have less children then before and are waaay more likely to go back to work after being stay at home temporary. The stay at home moms might not be that large portion of population.
- WillPostForFood 7y agoThere are about 9 million stay at home moms. That does seem small to me. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-home-moms-and-dads-account-for-about-one-in-five-u-s-parents/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-hom...
- watwut 7y agoThat is out of 327.2 million Americans (both genders).
- WillPostForFood 7y agoIn case it wasn't clear, I agree with you.
- russdill 7y agoKeep in mind, the US population is 51% female. So there is still a higher percentage of employed males vs employed females.
- Sharlin 7y agoHowever that may be simply because there are more retired women than retired men (the former living longer than the latter).
- Bartweiss 7y agoLifespans are the reason for that, and births are majority-male, so the adult stats are actually even more heavily female. But the 25–54 cohort is gender balanced, and women are the majority starting from 55–64, so the effect kicks in well before retirement. (This also screws with the labor force participation stats, since unless you check "prime age" there's no upper age boundary.)
- jl2718 7y agoThere are ~5% more males by birth, ~100% more males by Visa, and ~40% more males by illegal immigration.
- magduf 7y agoYes, and even so there's still more women. Basically, men get killed off early.
- notadoc 7y ago> What are men doing if not working? On disability? Homeless? Retiring earlier? Committing suicide? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2749451 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/ It's a horrible observation, as men are obviously in crisis. There's a large percentage of working age men not in the labor force too. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS15000001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS15000001 https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/mens-declining-labor-force-participation.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/mens-declining-... Some perhaps they lost prior jobs and did not regain positions of parity, now they're disenfranchised, socially isolated, in some form of despair, or even homeless. Anecdotally, the homeless populations I see everywhere in the west coast are 99% males aged 25-50.
- z9e 7y agoIt’s sad not seeing this get more attention in today’s politics.
- irrational 7y agoPlaying video games, watching porn, etc.? At least a lot of the articles I see about men leaving (or never entering) the workforce - entertainment seems to be the main way of filling up their time.
- bargle0 7y agoMy gut says prison.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- outime 7y agoFrom what I anecdotally see (outside US) some men got frustrated with society and just don’t want to work. Everything they need seem to be found at home, similar to the hikimori in Japan albeit not so extreme. It’s sometimes (so not always) related to dating failures. I could argue that dating is getting increasingly difficult for the heterosexual male and that paired with bad jobs would make some men think twice about participating in the society game. Some other people linked articles/studies talking about this so my non-scientific observation can be supported somewhat.