A front page article in the New York Times today describes men aged 30-54 who are not working, don't appear on unemployment rolls and stay unemployed for months or years. http://www.nytimes.c....
The article, by Louis Uchitelle and David Leonhardt, cites US Bureau of Labor statistics indicating that while the official rate of unemployment for men in this age group is around 4.3% nationally, adding the number who are not working and not looking for a job raises this figure to about 13%.
+óGé¼+ôAbout 13 percent of American men in this age group are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960+óGé¼Gäós. The difference represents 4 million men who would be working today if the employment rate had remained where it was in the 1950+óGé¼Gäós and 60+óGé¼Gäós.+óGé¼-¥
Why are these men unemployed and not looking for new work? They aren+óGé¼Gäót independently wealthy. Most of them subsist on dwindling savings, disability, income from their wives/partners, and off-the-grid earnings. They don+óGé¼Gäót fall neatly into one category, either.
+óGé¼+ôMost of these missing men are+óGé¼-ª former blue-collar workers with no more than a high school education. But their ranks are growing at all education and income levels.+óGé¼-¥
The article describes new competition in the workplace by better-educated women, and the changing nature of the economy.
+óGé¼+ôThese are men forced to compete to get back into the work force, and even then they cannot easily reconstruct what many lost in a former job,+óGé¼-¥ said Thomas A. Kochan, a labor and management expert at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. +óGé¼+ôSo they stop trying.+óGé¼-¥
So why are they stuck? I don+óGé¼Gäót believe that men are lazier than they were 30 years ago. But some opt to tough it out with no income rather than take lower level service industry jobs (+óGé¼+ôclean up on aisle four,+óGé¼-¥ +óGé¼+ôhere+óGé¼Gäós your bedpan,+óGé¼-¥ +óGé¼+ôdo you want fries with that?+óGé¼-¥).
About 25% of these men collect disability benefits, which is the most rapidly rising Federal entitlement program. While the benefits are for real disabilities, the article points out that +óGé¼+ôin some cases, the illnesses are not so serious that they would prevent people from working if a well-paying job with benefits were an option.+óGé¼-¥
Unfortunately, those good jobs become more elusive the longer one remains out of the work force.
Having 13% of men out of work during their prime earning years is a drag on our economy. Can the government do anything about it? Should they?
Well, one thing that might help would be to set policies that discourage off shoring of good jobs in America. Another would be to realign corporate subsidies for big businesses in order to encourage more innovation that results in new industries and employment opportunities. Education and training programs like those that Mark Warner advocates could include re-training for mid-life career changers, and to help men who have been incarcerated to find a point of entry into the legitimate working world.
It is in the public interest for the government to encourage the growth of good jobs, because a continuing trend of more people out of work+óGé¼GÇ¥good work+óGé¼GÇ¥increases the likelihood of economic disaster for everyone but the very rich in just a few short years. It looks like the incumbent Republican majority has other priorities.
That is another reason that I believe we need to change the direction of the United States, and a reason that I+óGé¼Gäóm encouraged by the candidacy of populist leaders like Jim Webb for the US Senate.
This number doesn't include the underemployed. The fathers competing with their sons for jobs. The people not working in the field they trained in. The people working part time.
They come off unemployment rolls because they run out of time, not because they find jobs. Could this number be much higher.
Thanks for posting it.