I saw this going viral America’s Young Men Are Falling Even Further Behind
As of August, 89% of this cohort of men were employed or looking for work, more than 700,000 fewer than if the current labor-force participation rate was at 2004 levels, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Aspen Economic Strategy Group policy director Luke Pardue. Women’s participation is up 6 percentage points in just the past 10 years, to 79%. A fifth of men in this same age range still lived with their parents as of 2023, according to the Census, compared with 12% of
I call it the mediocre men problem. 30+ years ago, men of mediocre abilities or talent could find reliable, long-term employment, such as at a factory or a union job. But today those men are dropping out of the labor force. The poor career prospects and low pay creates an incentive to not work and live with friends or parents, if the option exists. As I discuss in the post The End of Work, enormous wealth from baby boomers, to the projected tune of $50 trillion to later generations, has led to a trickle-down effect which can support the low-cost lifestyles of unemployed adult children.
The men who thrive in today’s economy tend to be agreeable or people-pleasers, as this is necessary to pass the pre-employment screening. But also have to be smart enough to justify the economic cost from the perspective of the employer. A high minimum wage combined with lots of applicants creates an incentive to choose smarter employees over merely mediocre ones, even for low-skilled work. Despite headlines about labor shortages and low unemployment, employers are choosier than ever, even for the simplest of jobs.
It’s not uncommon to read stories on Reddit and Quora of even well-qualified applicants being rejected many times and struggling to find work:
Men who have ornery personalities fare the worst in today’s service-sector-dominated economy, which may be tolerable if you’re super-talented or valuable like Sam Altman or Elon Musk, but does not work if you do not have positive attributes or skills to offset this. Mediocrity plus poor personality is a recipe for long-term unemployment. The expectation during Covid was that automation or work-from-home would replace in-person human interaction, but the opposite happened. Whether it’s app-powered food delivery or taxies, or the post-lockdown booming restaurant industry (e.g. Chipotle, Wing Stop), humans are expected to interact with each other more than ever. Due to differences in personality, women tend to excel at this more so than men.
Yet at the same time, rampant credentialism and pre-employment screening acts an IQ floor or filter. This means a lot of men not being up to par given these requirements. They either lack the temperament, are not credentialed/smart enough, or fail background checks. It does not help also that HR and lawyers rule everything. Employers are scared of bad press, bad employee reviews (on online job sites), or being sued, so they have to be extremely risk averse and impersonal in hiring. Ghosting has become the ‘new normal’ to avoid potentially litigious interactions.
Men who are talented still have tons of options, like in finance, sports, writing, STEM subjects, politics, social media etc. They can go the social media influencer route, like by being physically gifted and being a ‘fitness influencer’, or the 6-figure coder route, or the consultant or other white-collar route. Given the enormous economic stakes, such as beating-out a trillion-dollar tech competitor to corner ‘AI market’, top companies are obsessed with attracting elite talent to gain an edge, such as campus recruiting. For the most talented, it’s ‘yours to lose’ as it’s said. Sure, you still have to please others, but the payoff is so much greater compared to service sector work.
But those in the middle or worse in the ‘talent distribution’ have far fewer options, typically limited to the low-paying service sector or the injury-prone blue collar route. Or various side hustles or ‘gigs’ (e.g. Uber Eats) in which you’re at mercy of customer reviews and the TOS of those sites, that will look for any excuse to withhold pay or suspend your account. They cannot just whip up some code to impress a recruiter or ace a phone interview. They cannot do anything particularly well, hence mediocre.
White-collar work is often depicted in pop culture or satirized as dehumanizing or soul-sucking, but it’s no better for retail. Instead of boring meetings and bad bosses, it’s bad managers and bad customers, and much worse pay. Many of those young men who are dropping out would surely reenter if paid as well as white-collar workers. Sometimes something as simple as ‘more money’ is the reason and the solution, not some deep economic explanation or social analysis. Sure, this would not be economically viable, but it should not be surprising that people respond to incentives.
It’s not so much that today’s economy requires specialization, but that those who specialize tend to be among the most successful, outside of vague business titles such as ‘project manager’. This means being able to perform something difficult and economically valued, or doing something which is easier or lower barriers to entry but better than almost everyone else. Coding is an example the first. Despite AI, decent coders can still make a good living, but it’s not like you have to be among the best in the world at it.
Coding is hard enough that the intellectual barriers to entry prevent the profession from ever becoming too saturated, and there is lots of demand, again, despite AI. But for things which have low barriers to entry, necessitates being among the best to have any hope of making a living at it. Examples include being a pro athlete or a social media influencer. But this leaves a lot of people who cannot be either. Skills and talents are distributed unequally, like all human traits. Many guys work out at the gym and take steroids; few achieve enviable physiques. Top tech companies accept only a tiny percentage of applicants.
What we need are more or better options for those in the middle of the talent distribution, that isn’t otherwise luck/timing-dependent (like starting a successful podcast or buying crypto early), in which ‘showing up’ and not having to jump through endless pre-employment screening hoops, and being ‘decently competent’ instead of super-talented or overly-credentialed, is good enough.