Four years ago, America and the rest of the world saw its most intense spike in unemployment in recorded history. In today's news cycle, that is ancient history, but what isn't ignored is what has been left behind. There are now over 10 million people, mostly men, in America who are not working, not studying, not retired, and not institutionalized. They are just doing nothing. COVID-19 accelerated this trend, but it's been going on for decades. Since the 1960s, about 0.1% of American men have given up on work to never come back every single month. So why are so many people giving up so consistently, and more importantly, how are these people surviving without a job in this economy? In October, Mississippi's labor force participation rate was nearly 54%, while the national rate was over 62%. How many jobs on these two websites? It's been over a thousand combined. They're not working, and they're not looking for a job, and those are the folks who

We have to get into the labor market. Why aren't some Americans getting back to work? It's the million-dollar question. There are a lot of reasons why someone might not participate in the labor force. They might have retired. They might be still studying for qualifications. There might be people who are too sick to work, stay-at-home spouses, members of the military who are clearly working but don't officially count as part of the labor force. And then, of course, there are just really rich people who don't need to work to maintain their lifestyle. These groups have always existed, but there is a new group growing alongside them, which are people who have just given up. The fastest-growing group of these labor force dropouts has been men between the ages of 25 and 55. Men in this age range would typically be in the prime of their careers, but more and more of them are not working at all. Now, some of this can simply be explained by the fact that more

women have entered the workforce. In fact, up until 2008, women were entering the workforce almost as quickly as men were leaving it. Some men just took on domestic roles as stay-at-home husbands while their wives or partners focused on their careers instead. According to Pew Research, young women are now earning significantly more than young men in most major cities in America. Young women are also graduating college at higher rates than men. So, it makes sense that a growing group of men are tossing aside typical gender roles and doing work that doesn't get counted as typical employment. If this were the whole story, there would be absolutely nothing wrong with this. But let's be honest, having a stay-at-home parent, no matter what gender they are, is a luxury that most people simply cannot afford in the modern age, especially young people who are the fastest-growing group of labor force dropouts. There is something more going on here. Nicholas Erstad is a political

Economist who published The Book Men Without Work, which tracked the trend of working-age men simply giving up on work and largely removing themselves from society in the process. His book, which was first published in 2016, lines up perfectly with a 2022 study on the issue conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which found that men without a college degree in particular were dropping out of work because their earnings power was significantly lower than their peers who did have a 4-year degree. That's not unusual because college-educated people should expect to earn more than non-college-educated workers on average, but the finding found that the gap between the two groups had widened significantly, especially amongst college-educated versus non-college-educated men. Now, this was particularly surprising to the researchers because it would actually make more sense that higher-income workers would drop out of the labor force because if they are earning a lot of money, they have a better chance of marrying a higher-earning spouse or just saving.

up more money for an early retirement instead. They found the opposite. The group that earned less was more likely to drop out of work. And yes, before you ask, the study did account for the fact that people not working won't be making an income, so they would automatically be in the non-working low-income group. Now, since men are now overrepresented in non-college graduates, they were the largest group of people giving up on work. But even though it's tempting to make this an entirely gender-specific issue, and to be honest, it would make for a more engaging YouTube video, there are some forces at play here. The reason that people with lower incomes were dropping out was simply because they had less to lose and more to gain. Most unskilled jobs cannot buy you a comfortable lifestyle basically anywhere in America anymore. And as more people tie their identity and social status to their work and income, it's become much harder to accept unglamorous service positions.

if you were given two options, honestly consider which one you would choose. You could scrape by by working a few minimum wage jobs where you are on your feet, dealing with customers and managers all day. A job where you are unlikely to advance too far without a degree, and you won't have much time or energy left at the end of the day to pursue side projects. You might also be working a job that you aren't exactly proud to share with your friends, family, or romantic interests. The other option is that you could scrape by on whatever government programs or family support you could find. Maybe work on some side projects in your spare time or just fill your day with low-cost recreation like playing video games. I would like to think I appreciate the value of a hard day's work, but I have always had the luxury of a prestigious career and successful business. Given these specific options, how would you choose to spend your day? If you are brave enough, go ahead.

and share it in the comments below so people on the internet can call you a bootlicker or a lazy Zoomer respectively. Now, the second option also has the advantage that if someone asks you what you do for work, you can just tell them that you are working on a new business or taking some time off. The FED study found that this was one of the biggest reasons people didn't want to take on jobs that they thought were beneath them. Now, no matter what side of the fence you are on, this issue affects us all. These millions of people are out of work at the same time as we have major issues with worker shortages in our most important industries, and this trend is only going to get worse unless something changes. So, it's time to learn how money works, to find out how these people are surviving without work, and what it means for the rest of the workforce if they never come back. This week's video is sponsored by Brilliant. Brilliant is an interactive learning platform.

that turns complex topics into engaging and easy to understand lessons. Whether you're interested in math, data analysis, programming, or AI, Brilliant helps you master the material through hands-on problem-solving. One of their latest offerings is the introduction to probability course. This course dives into the fundamentals of probability, teaching you how to make informed decisions by analyzing real-world data. It's perfect for anyone learning to enhance their critical thinking and data interpretation skills. I've personally found this course invaluable. It breaks down challenging concepts into bite-sized lessons, making it easy to follow and apply in everyday situations. Plus, learning through interactive exercises is so much more effective than traditional methods. What I love about Brilliant is how seamlessly it fits into your daily routine. You can learn in just a few minutes a day on your computer, smartphone, or tablet, making it incredibly convenient no matter how busy your schedule is. To try everything Brilliant has to offer, including their introduction to probability course for free for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/howmoney.

works or click the link in the description. You'll also get 20% off your annual premium subscription. Apart from a few early retirees that made a lot of money at a young age, most of the people who are not working and are not looking for work are living extremely basic lives. Eberstadt's research went beyond the broader demographic studies and focused a lot on trying to figure out what these people were actually doing with their time. Now, the next few minutes are going to contain some hard-to-swallow pills, and even though Eberstadt is sometimes a bit direct with the way he lays out the facts, his research and his recommendations addressed some of the most important issues in our society. He found through national surveys that the average man not in work or looking for work was basically doing what you might expect. They were sitting at home, spending a majority of time behind a screen. Most of them contribute very little to looking after other members of a household.

and they were underrepresented in other civic activities like volunteering, even though they had more free time than their peers who worked or studied. He also poked TOS in the idea that a lot of these men had just become stay-at-home spouses, taking care of chores to support their working partner, a role that was in the past typically performed by women. Unfortunately, according to the federal survey data he collated, the average labor force dropout spent an equal amount of time on household care as the average employed woman and 5 minutes less per day than the average unemployed man who would theoretically be spending at least some of their time looking for a new job. What they were spending their time on was leisure activities and sleeping. The average person who had dropped out of the labor force was also far less likely to have children or a partner, and he theorized that there were two reasons for this. The first reason was that children, dating, and a family life are expensive commitments that people trying to get by without a job just

simply wouldn't be able to afford the second reason was that people with a family to support were inherently more motivated to go out and provide even if it meant working a job that a single person wouldn't of course this is a large sample size and there are plenty of people with children who don't work and plenty of couples totally outside of the labor force as well but even without these typical responsibilities daily life is still very expensive government benefits for people out of of work typically only extend to those people who are either actively seeking work or cannot work because of an illness or disability the exact makeup of these assistance programs vary state to state and of course outside of America different countries have different levels of social welfare but America is where this trend has been most pronounced and it's also where a bulk of the research on this trend has been done so as anybody who has ever tried to apply for government welfare in America will tell you the burden of proof to qualify for

these payments can be exceptionally high, with the only real exception being COVID-era stimulus, where arguably the burden of proof for payments was too low. Saying you need unemployment payments because you would prefer to stay at home all day vaping and playing Fortnite isn't going to fly with Uncle Sam. Whatever stat did find, though, was that it had become much easier for people to qualify for disability payments, which in most circumstances do not require recipients to be actively looking for work to maintain their payments. In his own book, he highlights how difficult it was to find consistent data on all of the government programs that might be available to these people, and of course needlessly pointing the finger at assistance to some of society's most vulnerable people is not the point here. What is, though, is that according to data from the Department of Social Security, annual disability insurance payments have outpaced all other major programs. They provide the data as a table, but here is a nice visual line chart. Dr. Dwight R. Lee, an economist, also proposed that a

major element that was overlooked was that a lot of these men were working. They were just doing it in the underground economy, which was estimated to be contributing about 2 trillion or about 12% of US GDP. This could include these people doing anything from working in formal cash jobs to skirt tax and minimum wage laws to outright illegal operations like shoplifting or selling drugs. So, the work of these researchers paints an image of this growing group of individuals mooching off friends, family, and the government while wasting their days away playing video games or being an overall burden on society. It's not exactly flattering, but to be fair, there are certainly people living these lives, and with nationwide or even global demographic trends like this, broad strokes need to be made. The researchers studying this trend are actually highly sympathetic to the situation of these people, and they seem motivated to actually fix the cause of these problems. I will, of course, be leaving a link to the full book in the video description if you want to read it yourself as

well as some great interviews these men have done that lets them articulate their grim feelings in a way that's a bit more human. The reality is that I can personally see if just a few things went differently in my own life. I could have easily fallen into the same comfortable trap most of you watching could have too, whether you realize it or not. But this still doesn't answer the most important question: why is this becoming more common? Most people, if given a choice, would prefer a nice stable job with an income that could provide a standard of living beyond basic survival. But yet, more and more people are dropping out of even trying to look for a job every single year. There is unfortunately no single answer as to why people are giving up, but there are some contributing factors. Firstly, competition for good prestigious jobs has become far more fierce, while pay for basic jobs has not kept up with living costs. Technology has made it much easier to isolate oneself from the rest of the world, and there are other broader social issues like the

opioid epidemic that at the very least has not helped this trend. One of the most damaging factors has been the insidious myth of the skill shortage, which has led to an economy where millions of people don't have a job, but there are millions of jobs that don't have people to fill them. I am going to be writing an article about how the idea of a skill shortage has been used to undermine the traditional career path of millions of Americans over on my free email newsletter. LinkedIn, the video description, something like the rise and fall of the tech bro, is a clear demonstration that even the most talented and driven workers have less control over their careers than they might like to admit. So, if you like this video, check out that one next to keep on learning how money works.

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