If you work in the community college world, awareness of current economic statistics and trends is useful. In fact, if you work anywhere in higher education, familiarity with economic data is helpful. Higher education is directly and indirectly affected by economic trends. Enrollment has an inverse relationship with recessions and depressions. People go to college when they can’t find work. When things are humming along and plenty of jobs are available, enrollment tends to drop. At a more detailed level, knowing where there are employment opportunities, what sorts of education of leads to what kinds of employment, and broader trends is essential to institutional effectiveness at all levels.
Reading about and remembering the data is relatively easy. We can agree on numbers – they are simply that, after all – but making sense of them? That is a tall task. Unexpected economic data proves difficult to ignore and harder still to understand.
Bear all that in mind when reading Nicholas Eberstadt’s Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis. It’s a concise, well-written volume filled with easy to understand charts and tables. Eberstatd is a political economist who holds a chair at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. His primary aim is to present important data on men and work – and to get us to think about it. He also offers possible causes and solutions. The analysis, though, takes a back seat to defining the issue. It’s extraordinarily important and interesting. Over the past few decades, the work rate for men has dropped steadily and dramatically.
Eberstadt starts with basics. He explains that using traditional economic measures, like net worth, the United States is extremely wealthy and that wealth is increasing. When one looks at per capita growth, though, the numbers tell a different story. The work rate – the percentage of adults actually employed and making money – has been declining. Eberstadt focuses on that figure and pulls out a central fact: the work rates of men have declined from 85.8% in 1948 to 68.2% in 2015.
A slightly different take on the numbers will make this more clear. The prime employment age of men is 25 to 54. In 1948, 94.1% of all American males in that age group were working. In 2015, 84.3% of the males in that group were employed. This is a tremendous drop. The work rates for men today is similar to the work rates for men in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Eberstadt’s analysis makes clear that the focus in the media on the unemployment rate, which only includes those that are looking for work, does not tell the whole story of Americans and jobs. The key figure in the book is Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR).
Eberstadt tracks the data carefully. The drop in men’s LFPR is not because there have been massive increases in men attending college or training programs. Women, in fact, are the majority of attendees in higher education. Ebertadt contrasts male work rates with female work rates, and more and more women have entered the workforce over the decades. In addition, he compares trends in the United States with other developed economies. America is anomalous. No other country has seen a similar flight of men from the workforce. Something important is going on and I think that Eberstadt is right to call it a crisis. Today in the United States there are more than seven million able-bodied men, between the ages of 25 and 54, who are unemployed and not seeking employment.
To figure out what these men are doing and who they are, Eberstadt uses a variety of surveys, studies and other measures. He shows that these non-working men are more likely to have lower levels of education, to be native-born, African-American, Latino or white, and be unmarried. Immigrants consistently show higher levels of workforce participation, as do married men. The data suggest that nonworking men do not do more housework, childcare or family care, are less likely to attend church, and are less likely to volunteer. Nonworking men spend more time socializing. The greatest difference, though, between nonworking men and the rest of the population is in watching television. Nonworking men average five and a half hours every day watching TV and movies. The difference is so great – even compared with unemployed men – that Eberstadt considers it to signify a different mentality.
The men get by with help from family, friends, and government supports. Eberstadt is direct about the men’s profound disengagement: “these men appear to have relinquished what we think of ordinarily as adult responsibilities not only as breadwinners but as parents, family members, community members, and citizens.”
When it comes to reasons to explain this distressing state of affairs, Eberstadt teases out a number of factors. He looks at changes in the economy, supports for the nonworking, the criminal justice system and the consequences of criminalizing so many. He proposes more trims to the safety net. Rounding out Men Without Work are two dissenting essays from economists who interpret the data – its causes and potential ways to address it – in different ways. There is no consensus among the experts.
Higher education, I believe, should give long-term attention to the trends highlighted in Men Without Work. As we know from studies about access, completion and impact, higher education is most effective when it is intentional and thoughtful. Education can do much to give people skills, direction, and tools to lead more impactful lives. All of us would be well-served if we could see ways to help more men engage, whether it is in an office, factory, community or home. Meaningful work – making a difference – is central to leading a meaningful life.
David Potash