미국 내 주요 연령대 남성 노동력 참여율 감소

### 한창 일할 나이의 남성 노동력 참여율 감소: 원인과 결과
* 📉 2024년 8월 현재 25~54세 한창 일할 나이의 남성 중 **13.7%가 일하지 않고** 있으며, 이는 1954년의 **7.2%에서 크게 증가**한 수치로 사회와 경제에 대한 우려가 커지고 있습니다.
* 🔍 한창 일할 나이의 남성 실업률은 **3.4%이지만, 약 10.5%, 즉 약 680만 명의 남성이 일하지도 구직하지도 않고 있으며** 이는 1954년의 2.5%에서 급격히 증가한 수치입니다.
* 📚 실직 남성의 거의 절반이 구식 기술, 교육 부족, 열악한 업무 기록 등의 이유를 들며, **교육이 고용 상태에 중요한 요소**로 작용한다고 답했습니다.
* 🏭 노동력에 참여하지 않는 주요 연령대 남성의 상당수는 **기술 발전과 경쟁**으로 인해 안정적인 일자리가 사라진 **제조업 쇠퇴의 영향을 받은 지역**에 집중되어 있습니다.
* 💸 고등학교 졸업장을 가진 남성의 임금은 **1973년 57,600달러에서 2023년 45,000달러로 감소**했으며, 이로 인해 **대학 교육을 받지 않은 남성의 노동력 이탈률이 44% 증가**했습니다.
* 🤕 건강 문제도 중요한 역할을 하는데, **남성의 57%가 신체적 또는 정신적 건강 문제**를 이유로 구직 활동을 하지 않는다고 답했으며, **오피오이드 처방이 노동력 참여에 영향을 미친다**는 것으로 나타났습니다.
* 🔗 남성의 노동력 참여가 장기적으로 감소하면 **경제 성장을 저해**하고 부의 격차를 악화시키며 **건설과 같은 중요 부문에서 노동력 부족**으로 이어질 수 있습니다.
* 🛠 전문가들은 **교육 프로그램을 개선하고, 직업 만족도를 높이고, 정신 건강 문제를 해결하는 것**이 신중년 남성의 노동력 재통합을 위한 필수 단계라고 제안합니다.

남성의 노동력 참여 감소는 경제 성장을 위협하고 사회 문제를 악화시키므로 시급한 관심과 효과적인 해결책이 필요합니다.

Men have been steadily dropping out of the workforce, especially men aged 25 to 54, who are often considered to be in their prime working years. As of August 2024, 13.7% of prime-age men were not working, compared to just 7.2% in 1954. The long-term decline in labor force participation by so-called prime-age men is a tremendous worry for our society, for our economy, and probably also for our political system. There's a surplus of prime-age workers who could be working and aren't. And that's this puzzling problem. The unemployment rate for prime-age working men set at 3.4% in August 2024. This number primarily includes those who are unemployed and looking for a job, but about 10.5% of men in their prime working years, or roughly 6.8 million men nationwide, are neither working nor looking for employment, compared to just 2.5% in 1954.

What's surprising is it's not a Covid phenomenon. It's not a recession phenomenon. And for every prime-age man who is unemployed and looking for a job, there are more than three, in some years four, who are neither working nor looking for work. So what's driving men out of the workforce? And if left unchecked, what impact will it have on the US economy? Nearly half of prime-age men out of the workforce cited obsolete skills, lack of education and training, poor work record, or security issues as a reason preventing them from work. Education is a very important predictor of a prime-age man's odds of being out of the labor force. The big impacts are on the non-college-educated groups, on their ability to enter and stay in the labor market. Men who are not college-educated leave the workforce at higher rates than men who are. At the same time, fewer younger men have been enrolling in college over the past decade. If you look at the geography of where the most prime

age men out of the labor force are, in particular, they tend to be in places that have experienced manufacturing declines. They used to graduate with a high school education and have good, stable jobs. They weren't glamorous jobs. They were, you know, automobile factories, sometimes mines, other manufacturing jobs. But they were respected. They were stable, and they could support a family. Since then, due to technology-driven growth, a little bit due to Chinese competition, you've had a lot of manufacturing firms and the places where they were located that you know that were one-horse towns become ghost lands, right? Wages could also be a contributing factor. Median annual wages for men with a high school diploma have fallen from just over $57,600 in 1973 to $45,000 in 2023, adjusted for inflation. At the same time, wages for those with a bachelor's degree or more have increased by about $6,300 during the same period. This decline in earnings led to a 44%

growth in the exit rate of men without a college degree from the workforce between 1980 and 2019. I think honestly, status plays more of a role than wages. As I said before, you had a manufacturing job. It was respected. You were part of a community breadwinner for your family. You had organizations like unions or rotary clubs that surrounded your job, and that's gone. In general, men without children are also less likely to participate in the workforce compared to men with children, especially men without education or training after high school. What we have seen is a huge rise in the proportion of prime-age men who've never been married and a very, very significant decline in the proportion who are currently married and have kids at home. And those two trends track closely with the big changes that we've seen about male attachment in the labor force. Correlation isn't always causation, but looking at that correspondence is real important, I think. Meanwhile, 57% of the roughly 10% of men not looking

for work said their physical or mental health was the main reason for not being employed, with 55% citing a disability, serious illness, and/or receiving disability benefits. The whole question about the health and the mental health of male workforce dropouts is an extremely important, and I think concerning one. A distressing proportion of the men who are out of the workforce say they're using pain medications every day. A 2017 research paper estimates that an increase in opioid prescription between 1999 to 2015 led to about 43% of the decline in men's labor force participation rate during that period. So then you have to ask, what sort of pain are we talking about? Are we talking about physical pain? Are we talking about metaphysical pain? There's an enormous amount of depression, mental health challenges that men in this grouping face. Some of this is a chicken and egg question. Did you drop out because you were feeling sad, or are you sad because you dropped out and you're living on

the couch? Unemployment is really terrible for people's well-being. Often, people adapt to all kinds of negative shocks, losing a kid, being widowed, whatever, and eventually kind of come back. But long-term unemployment is one of the worst things in terms of that. So, what you have is a kind of scarring effect. And it's worse for men because their identity is much more wrapped up in their role as a worker. Men's declining workforce participation can potentially leave a lasting impact on the American economy. It means slower growth of the economy. Obviously, it means bigger wealth gaps within our society. It certainly will have an impact on our productivity and probably already is. The US has been experiencing a severe shortage in labor, still missing 1.7 million Americans from the workforce compared to February 2020. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that US GDP could have been $296 to $442 billion higher in 2023 if the country had been able to fill its job

vacancies. However, some experts suggest the impacts of men leaving or never entering the workforce could be more sector-specific. You need young men coming in wanting to replace those people going out. And so, if men have primarily been in more manual labor, more skilled trades. If they're older and they're leaving in their retirement, and there's not as many young men coming in, both because of declining cohort sizes, but moving into a different direction type of careers, we're going to be losing that sector of productivity. Despite a steep rise in federal funding, the infrastructure sector hasn't been able to find enough workers. With the construction workforce shortage surpassing half a million in 2024. We are a little concerned about the impact and inflation is going to have and has had on the movement of infrastructure dollars into the actual productive activity. Having a shortage of men in construction is going to raise a problem. The trend could have a dire sociopolitical impact as

well. It'll get worse in ways that we would not like. I mean, I think it would lead to more premature deaths, but it will also likely lead to radicalization and polarization because this is a frustrated, left-behind group with no options. There are problems that government can address and problems that government can't address. One of the first functions that beats out policy is economic growth. You have a strong economy. You're going to have increased wage structure, and it's going to bring people back into the market. More than a quarter of prime-age men not looking for work cited insufficient pay as a reason preventing them from work, and nearly half said competitive pay, salary compensation, and/or bonuses was a very important factor when considering whether to enter or return to the workforce for the young. Better training, skills training. Better post some form of post-high school education, encouraging that, maybe even subsidizing that. I think part of the mental youth mental health crisis has to do with what's next.

What's I going to do? What am I going to do? Are there any stable jobs I can't afford college. All those questions all come together. And so models that help them kind of give them a jump start can be really effective ways of intervening. There are actually now really promising programs in high schools which teach kids financial literacy. They teach them about equitable entrepreneurship. They teach them about how do you foster better mental health as part of the workplace. And it seems to inspire kids to go on to college, right, because they sort of see a pathway where they didn't see it before. 29% of men out of the labor force said that training and educational programs was another important factor in considering a return to the workforce. Having the type of commitment from the employer to train and retain and offer upward mobility for workers, I think will be very important. Trying to figure out more about career pathways in the labor market and not just the education side. So how is it that someone moves from first job, next

job to best job. How do we help people understand and navigate? Nearly a quarter of working Americans said they weren't satisfied with their growth opportunities in the workplace. Compared to other OECD countries that, on average, spend 0.1% of their GDP on training their workers, the US spent only 0.03% of their GDP on job training in 2022. Older age groups, it's tougher. You know, you're probably not going to get these guys to retrain, but you can get there are a lot of programs that have largely been pioneered in the UK much more than here, but we're starting to pick up on them that literally just try and reboot community activities. They get these isolated people and despair out of their houses. It can make a difference. Social programs like disability benefits spark contentious debate. It's very controversial. People have very strong opinions about this. While we don't know why it is happening, we can be pretty clear that the social welfare programs are

helping and the disability programs are helping to finance this situation in a way that was never originally intended. A 2018 analysis by the Joint Economic Committee found that 64% of prime-aged men who aren't working were receiving some sort of government assistance. So the one benefit that they rely heavily on is disability insurance. One, because they often are unable to work if they have a physical injury or high levels of addiction or whatever. But it also provides health insurance, which is huge. Very much against the initial intentions of the founders of the program. They've ended up with a perverse situation that too often subsidizes or even incentivizes helplessness and long-term dependence. If we thought about a system in which we had a work-first principle where the incentives were for getting the training and then showing up at the job and then staying at the job. I think we'd be in a lot better place than we are today. However, some experts remain doubtful about whether

Altering the benefits program will lead to meaningful results. I think until we deal with the deeper problem of ill health, ill mental health, these guys aren't going to respond to incentives. Everybody is responsible for their, you know, for their brothers. Everybody's responsible for their neighbors and their friends. And we ourselves as citizens can help to shine a spotlight on this. It shouldn't be America's invisible problem. And the more that we talk about it, the more that we pay attention to it, the closer we get to turning this around.

Why Men Are Leaving The Workforce

Welcome to the official YouTube channel for CNBC. From 'Wall Street' to 'Main Street' to award winning original documentaries and Reality TV series, CNBC has you covered. Experience special sneak peeks of your favorite shows, exclusive video and more.

For real-time news updates from around the world, visit: http://www.cnbc.com

For CNBC's primetime TV lineup, visit http://tv.cnbc.com

For CNBC's International YouTube channel, visit: http://www.youtube.com/cnbcinternational

CNBC

노동력에서 중장년층 남성의 감소

주요 연령대 남성(25~54세)의 비경제활동인구는 꾸준히 증가하여 1954년 7.

이 연령대의 남성 680만 명이 일하지도 구직활동도 하지 않고 있어 사회, 경제, 정치 시스템에서 우려하는 추세입니다.

이러한 감소는 구식 기술, 교육 및 훈련 부족, 열악한 업무 기록, 제조업 쇠퇴의 지리적 영향과 같은 요인에 의해 주도되고 있으며 고등학교 졸업장을 가진 남성의 평균 임금도 크게 떨어지고 있습니다.

1980년부터 2019년까지 대학 학위가 없는 남성의 노동력 이탈률이 크게 증가했으며, 임금보다 지위가 더 큰 영향을 미쳤습니다.

자녀가 없는 남성은 노동력에 참여할 가능성이 낮으며, 미혼이면서 자녀가 없는 주요 연령대 남성의 비율이 증가했습니다.

신체적, 정신적 건강 문제와 약물 사용을 포함한 건강 문제는 남성의 노동력 참여 감소에 기여하는 주요 요인이며, 이는 경제와 생산성에 지속적인 영향을 미칩니다.

육체노동과 숙련된 직종에서 노년층이 이탈하면서 특히 건설 부문에서 인력 부족이 발생하고 있으며, 2024년에는 50만 명을 넘어설 것으로 예상됩니다.

이러한 추세는 좌절하고 낙오된 사람들 사이에서 급진화와 양극화로 이어질 수 있는 사회정치적 영향에 대한 우려를 불러일으키고 있습니다.

이 문제를 해결하려면 경제 성장, 경쟁력 있는 임금, 청년들을 위한 더 나은 훈련 및 교육 기회에 초점을 맞춰야 합니다.

유망한 고등학교 프로그램에서는 금융 이해력, 공평한 기업가 정신, 직장 내 정신 건강을 가르치며 학생들이 대학에 진학하도록 독려하고 있습니다.

훈련 및 교육 프로그램은 직장 복귀를 고려하는 실직 남성에게 매우 중요한 것으로 간주됩니다.

미국은 다른 OECD 국가에 비해 직업 훈련에 대한 투자가 뒤쳐져 있으며, 고립된 개인을 돕기 위한 지역사회 재부팅 프로그램이 등장하고 있습니다.

장애인 프로그램이 고용에 미치는 영향

장애 프로그램은 본의 아니게 장기적인 의존에 자금을 지원하고 있으며, 일하지 않는 주요 연령대 남성의 64%가 정부 지원을 받고 있습니다.

건강 보험을 포함한 이 프로그램의 혜택은 무력감을 보조하는 왜곡된 상황을 만들어냈습니다.

전문가들은 건강 및 정신 건강과 같은 더 근본적인 문제를 해결하지 않고 복지 프로그램을 변경하는 것이 의미 있는 결과를 가져올 수 있을지 의문입니다.