This report created a splash, although the findings are hardly news.
The prime-age male labor force participation rate has been falling in the United States for more than half a century. This long-term trend is worrisome, since it indicates that American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are increasingly disconnected from the labor market, lowering potential gains in productivity and economic growth. Although many higher-income economies have also experienced long-term declines in prime-age male labor force participation, the decline in the United States has been noticeably steeper, leaving our labor market—a crucial engine of growth—operating below its potential. Absent policy changes, this long-standing decline could continue, as more Baby Boomers move into retirement, and as younger cohorts enter the labor force at lower rates.
No single factor can fully explain this decline, but analysis suggests that a reduction in the demand for less skilled labor has been a key cause of declining participation rates as well as lower wages for less skilled workers.
Yes, if quantity goes down and price goes down, then you should interpret it as a demand shift.
Long-time readers of this blog know that I focus on what I call the four forces: New Commanding Heights (away from manufacturing and toward education and health care; factor-price equalization (easier for foreign workers to compete with U.S. workers; technology; and assortative mating. All of these play a role in reducing demand for the prototypical low-skilled male. And none is reversible.
And yet, they are all eating and living. Where is their daily bread coming from?
Note also, the relatively sharp drop since 2008.
They make enough for themselves and then stop rather than be over productive to pay for families. Part time work, temporary work, disability, earlier retirement, under the table income… Same way black men survived with such low employment rates for the last 50 years
I see it like you. Education, health care and government services are on the rise and those jobs are overwhelmingly occupied by women. At least here in Germany. And at least in Germany the increase in those sectors is not reflected by an increase in quality. It is like tenure in the US. And this is more worrisome imo than the reduction in low skill male Labour jobs..
“those jobs are overwhelmingly occupied by women.” And this cannot have anything at all to do with the complete capture of education by feminism.
Is this a problem that people even want to fix? I suspect that there is a lot of not-so-hidden glee at the plight of the white male. “We can’t do anything about it, sorry” is really a way of saying “hahahahahaaha loser!”
The white male blows them all away. Not the best effort in posting.
I would say we should stop making it worse, but it is already as bad as it will get though resultant trends still have a ways to go.
It may be that the US culture is changing to be more like a pride of lions. Other human cultures are/have been run on that same principle division of labor between the sexes, but they are/were, without exception, technologically backwards. This trend should worry everyone in the US, but it apparently does not.
Foreign competiton is reversible
Yes. Both kinds of foreign competition can be reversed, somewhat: (1) foreigners working here illegally can be repatriated, (2) imports of goods with high proportions of low-skill labor in their manufacture, e.g. apparel, can be subject to tariffs. The latter policy would lower the average physical standard of living in the US – Ricardo’s math tells us that – but at the low end it would have to help. (If workers who make apparel – or are labor market competitors of those who do get an X% pay benefit from the trade policy, and their cost of living goes up Y% because of the policy, surely X >> Y so those workers will be ahead, while the rest of us will be the losers.)
Ken
At a minimum, we could readily avoid importing MORE foreigners – if the ruling class would deign to act in the interest of the existing citizenry. This would not reverse the problem, but it would at least avoid worsening a major part of it. But, as has happened in Europe, our betters evidently have decided that they want a new and different population.
It depends on who the “foreigners” are. You may hurt the existing citizenry.
What we have now is a come one, come all policy. When the great and good talk about bringing in high-skill immigrants (which I presume is what you have in mind), it almost always turns out to be ordinary tech workers – not Einsteins or Andrew Carnegies – who replace perfectly competent American workers.
How to reconcile: “a reduction in the demand for less skilled labor” with other evidence suggesting that most new jobs do not require a university education? Or, does this simply mean there is a demand for technically skilled people, whether trades (electricians, etc) or professions (engineers, nurses, doctors…)?
A college graduate is not skilled labor. The STEM do come with some experience in technical lab skills, but the Liberal Arts major is not a skilled worker at graduation. Less so today, the Liberal Arts major may graduate with good writing skills, perhaps research skills.
But a college graduate is not skilled labor like someone skilled in the trades, until they’ve actually developed some skills.
As an academic insider, I’m baffled by Mr. Kling classing higher ed among the “commanding heights.” From my view the whole business is imploding. Its political support is dripping towards zero. Just look at Illinois, which has effectively zeroed out its university budget. Yes, great howls emit from academics, but once you get a mile off campus all you hear is silence.
That’s the most extreme example, though I can’t think of a single state where taxpayers are being proportionately more generous to higher ed.
Just look at Illinois, which has effectively zeroed out its university budget.
What, the University of Illinois is closing? Why haven’t I heard about that?
It sure isn’t costing what you think. Capitalism is parasitical. It can’t survive without expansion. In some respect, it represents the collectivism of the merchant caste.
People that want to live isolated and purified DNA can’t live a neo-liberal template. The market will crash once expansion is done, their kin will starve and the socialism will begin just for survival.
Ah, modern day politics is such a lie. Time for a dialectical explosion.