Men without work -- they're not working and it's not working

October 20, 2023. Or, men refusing to get a job. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Ten years ago, I posted this assertion my George Will on my Facebook page.

Since then, things have only grown worse. We have record eleven million unfilled jobs and almost record low unemployment. But how can that be? Easy: Pay people to not work, to retire early, and to claim disability. And, worse, Covid policies and over trillion dollars given out by the government have fuels inflation: too few goods, too little productivity and too many dollars that people accumulated while much of the country was NOT working in 2020 and 2021.

Nicke Eberstadt's "Men without work," reaffirms the position I asserted ten years ago, when in preparing to give a speech (see file, below) to the Catholic Business Network of Washington, I learned sone astounding statistics about the nature of not working in the United Stats today. Before than, I had opened my management classes with a graphic illustration of how about 140 million workers supported themselves and another 200 million "non-workers." At that time, the biggest problem was the surge in men on disability pay, along with those choosing to take Social Security as early as possible (age 62) and retire.

Catholic Business Network Nov 2013.docx

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Here is a summary of Ebersadt's work, from the book's Amazon page:

Nicholas Eberstadt’s landmark 2016 study, Men Without Work, cast a spotlight on the collapse of work for men in modern America. Rosy reports of low unemployment rates and “full or near full employment” conditions, he contends, were overlooking a quiet, continuing crisis: Depression-era work rates for American men of “prime working age” (25–54).

The grim truth: over six million prime-age men were neither working nor looking for work. Conventional unemployment measures ignored these labor force dropouts, but their ranks had been rising relentlessly for half a century. Eberstadt’s unflinching analysis was, in the words of The New York Times, “an unsettling portrait not just of male unemployment, but also of lives deeply alienated from civil society.”

The famed American work ethic was once near universal: men of sound mind and body took pride in contributing to their communities and families. No longer, warned Eberstadt. And now—six years and one catastrophic pandemic later—the problem has not only worsened: it has seemingly been spreading among prime-age women and workers over fifty-five.

In a brand new introduction, Eberstadt explains how the government’s response to Covid-19 inadvertently exacerbated the flight from work in America. From indiscriminate pandemic shutdowns to almost unconditional “unemployment” benefits, Americans were essentially paid not to work.

Thus today, despite the vaccine rollouts, inexplicable numbers of working age men and women are sitting on the sidelines while over 11 million jobs go unfilled. Current low rates of unemployment, touted by pundits and politicians, are grievously misleading. The truth is that fewer prime-age American men are looking for readily available work than at any previous juncture in our history. And others may be catching the “Men Without Work” virus too.

Given the devastating economic impact of the Covid calamity and the unforeseen aftershocks yet to come, this reissue of Eberstadt’s groundbreaking work is timelier than ever.