Today Explained: More Men Are Leaving the Workforce.

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Today Explained: Why More Men Are Leaving the Workforce

It's time now for today explained this is where we break down some of the biggest stories in the news, how we got here and where we go next. Where are the men? A lot of economists are asking the same question and these economists who focus on the labor force are trying to find out what happened to millions of men who seemingly vanished from the workforce. Their disappearance is having a profound impact on the U. S. Economy and it's also contributing to inflation. Now, let me connect the dots for you. The missing men are between the ages of 25 and 54, which is considered prime working age. In January 88.5% of the men in this group were working, or at least looking for a job that's lower than during the pandemic when 89.2 were in the labor market and that translates into 2.7 million missing working men. The rate for women is set 6.9%, which is very close to pre pandemic levels, economists say a lot of this has to do with the way our economy is evolving. Service work is growing while traditional blue collar work, like manufacturing is declining here in the us. But those explanations. Well, they're a little bit too simplistic. Unless you're just independently wealthy. You just can't not work. You have to pay your bills. You got to eat. A lot of these men are not working because they're relying on their wives partners, parents for support a Federal Reserve Banks in the US have studied this issue 1, 2021 study blamed the missing workers on an uptick in male substance abuse and heavy video game. Use another study from the Federal Reserve Bank of boston points to a difference between men who graduated from college and those who did not. Those without degrees left the labor force in greater numbers because their wages dropped so much from 1980 to 2019, the median wage for non college educated men fell 17% adjusted for inflation, those degrees. Those people with degrees Had a 20% pay bump. In contrast, the Fed is raising interest rates of slow hiring and investment because prices are so high, including wages. So if these 2.7 million prime age working men rejoined the workforce, that would slow the rate of wage growth and inflation. That could be enough of a nudge for the Fed to keep rates low.