Title: Why Young Men Are “Falling Behind”

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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian today. The paths into adulthood for America's young adults seem to be diverging by gender. Recent data shows that more women ages 25 to 34 have entered the workforce in recent years than ever. Meanwhile, the share of young men in the labor market hasn't grown in a decade. Without jobs, young men are more likely than women to move back in with their parents, and without a clear path into adulthood, many report feeling isolated and aimless.

Joining us now to discuss what's going on with young adult men is Rachel Wolfe, economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She wrote about this trend in a piece titled America’s Young Men Are Falling Even Further Behind. Rachel, welcome back to WNYC.

Rachel Wolfe: Thanks so much for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, if you're a young man who has had a hard time navigating adulthood, we'd love to hear from you. Have you tried going to college or tried a new career or had an opportunity derailed? How has the pandemic affected you or anything else you want to share? If this sounds familiar to you, the number is 212-433 WNYC. That's two 212-433-9692. You can also text that number. Parents of young adults, if you have a child who's having a hard time getting started in adulthood, maybe dropped out of college, or moved back home, we also want to hear your stories.

Again, the number 212-433 WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Rachel, you write, "Presented with a more equal playing field, young women are seizing the opportunities in front of them while young men are floundering." What have we seen in terms of labor force participation among young adults over the past decade?

Rachel Wolfe: It's an interesting story. What we're seeing is that women's labor force participation has really shot up in recent years in particular. It's reached a record since the pandemic, and it's now up to 79%, which is up six percentage points in just the past ten years. What's happening with young men is very different. There's been this long-term decline in men's labor force participation on the whole. It's been stagnant for the past decade. We would expect to see increases similar to women.

The jobs are there, young men just don't seem to be able or interested in doing them. What we found is that there are more than 700,000 fewer men ages 25 to 34 in the workforce than if the current participation rate was at 2004 levels today.

Brigid Bergin: You just mentioned that the jobs are there. We're not talking about jobs disappearing or women taking men's jobs in any case, or is there some combination of factors that some of those traditionally male jobs, maybe manufacturing, are less of a source of employment for some of these men?

Rachel Wolfe: It's complicated. Women's advancement definitely has not come at the expense of men's. That was clear in all the conversations that I had. What has happened, though, is that we've seen a shift in where the new jobs are. There are plenty of jobs out there, but they are not necessarily in the fields that have traditionally been appealing to men. There has been this long-term decline in manufacturing jobs. You can actually trace the longer-term decline in men's labor participation to the long-term decline in manufacturing, and where you're seeing a lot of growth is in more of the helping professions.

Home health aids are one of the fastest growing fields. We need more teachers, nurses, things like that. These are roles that are typically a little bit less appealing to men. Yes, that is one of the problems, but it is not the case that women are responsible for the decline. [laughs] There are plenty of jobs to go around. They just look a little bit different than they might have in the past.

Brigid Bergin: Let's bring in a caller. Ed in the Bronx. Ed, I think you have a personal perspective on this as a father, is that right?

Ed: Correct. I think that, first of all, framing is everything, and when you frame it as failure to launch and in a sense, blame the victim with that framing, I think it sets the wrong tone for the discussion. The point of the matter is it should never be men against women, women against men. I know that's a dividing conquer strategy that works for the 1%, but it doesn't work for the 99%. Therefore, I see this more as a problem of-- you may say there's a lot of jobs out there. There are a lot of jobs out there.

They're posted, but that doesn't mean that employers are actually taking candidates from the many, many, many candidates that apply. I don't know to what extent all the technology filters out a lot of these candidates. They don't fit the script, let's say, but the problem is a problem of opportunity regardless of how this is discussed. It's not the failure of the men not wanting and that they desire to come back to their parents' home and live there and not seek jobs. They're seeking jobs. I know firsthand.

Your guest's anecdotal evidence doesn't surpass my anecdotal evidence. I think we not only fail young boys and young men, but we fail society when employers, as you see, at the top-- To the extent, there are top women at these positions, and certainly, there are very few of those and many more men, but you see CEO's making outrageous amounts of money, thousands of times more than their young workers. They're pocketing all the profits. They're not sharing it broadly.

They're not necessarily investing in their companies in a way that they should and bringing in the workforce of young people like past generations used to do. Maybe it's automation, maybe there's multiple factors, but let's look at the problem where it really starts at the source. It's the companies that are not hiring enough people and organizations because it's not just private industry. It's all these organizations. In some cases, women are better qualified for a particular job. In other cases, maybe not.

The point is we shouldn't pit one another against each other. We should look at the bigger problem, zoom out, and say, "Why is this happening to our children?" Because this does not bode well for the future.

Brigid Bergin: Ed, thank you so much. I really appreciate that perspective. I can feel in your voice how personal you feel this. We appreciate the feedback about the framing. Failure to launch, I think was a quick way to describe it, but I think there is something to be said about whether or not this is a structural problem that we have. Hiring issues that stem from decisions made by companies and their willingness to actually hire more workers or hire different kinds of workers versus an individual, perhaps lack of ambition, which that may have been interpreted as.

We appreciate your feedback and thank you for your perspective. I want to bring in another caller. Let's go to Robert in Norwalk, Connecticut. Robert, thanks so much for calling.

Robert: Hi. Thank you for having me on. Just a quick background on me. I graduated school in 2017 for college with environmental science as a major as well as biology as a minor, and then economics as well. I worked at an environmental engineering firm for a little while and the pandemic happens so I moved back in with family.

Ever since the pandemic, it's been tough to find work. I have a job now, which is great, but it's not in the field that I was initially training for at all. I wouldn't blame it on anyone. I just think it's tough out there at this point in time. Affording rent is just about impossible no matter where you look. I'm just going to be living paycheck to paycheck so it's financially responsible just to stay home and help my parents with their bills at the end of the day.

Brigid Bergin: Robert, thanks for that perspective. We appreciate your call. Rachel, Robert brought up something that I know that you talked about. I'm wondering how much of what we're seeing now, particularly the impact on young men, is pandemic-related. On the one hand, you write about how remote work has made it easier for both men and women to, say, take care of family, children, aging parents, but how much has the pandemic affected men and their ability to find careers?

Rachel Wolfe: The pandemic has had a bigger impact on men than women as far as the amount of time that they're spending alone. In terms of their ability to find careers and to stay in a chosen profession, I think there's something else going on there that I think is affecting people of all genders. What you're describing, where it just makes more sense to live at home with parents, with rent being so high, I feel that, too.

That's not what the story is about, really, because we've seen an increase in both men and women living at home since the pandemic, which is nothing a bad thing by any means, but we have also seen that men are twice as likely to live at home as women, and that's a widening gap. Women are also more likely to leave home to go find a job, whereas men were seeing less geographic mobility. The pandemic exacerbated what had already been going on.

The researchers that I spoke to told me where it turned this long-term problem that young men and boys were facing already of this purposelessness into a more acute problem, where there's just a much bigger divergence between the trajectories of men and women. We see that in their rates of college attendance, the labor force participation rates. I do want to point out that young men, their labor force participation rates are still higher than women's.

They still do make more money. It's the growth that's different. Men are on this stagnant and long-term declining trajectory, whereas women are moving upwards, which researchers told me is actually part of why young men rightfully feel like they are doing worse than prior generations, whereas women feel like they have more and better opportunities than their mothers and grandmothers. The framing really is important there.

Brigid Bergin: Rachel, we have lots of callers who want to share their stories. Before we get to another one, I just want to-- you profiled a family in your story, a daughter who had recently finished a business degree and got engaged while the sons still remained at home with their parents. That is another anecdote we're hearing lots of stories, but I'm wondering, are there statistics that show how many men are living with their parents, and some numbers to back up some of the stories that we're hearing?

Rachel Wolfe: Yes. About 20% of men ages 25 to 34 are living with their parents, compared to 12% of women. That's gone up for both groups in recent years, but more for men than for women. Rent being so expensive is absolutely a factor here, but I think the other thing that's going on is there is this group of young men who are not in education, employment or training, what economists refer to as neat. The number of young men who fit that category, and women, is up since before the pandemic, but it's up much more for men. There are about 300,000 more men than women in that category, 8.6% of young men ages 16 to 30. It's considerable.

Brigid Bergin: If you're just tuning in, I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian Lehrer. Today we're speaking with Rachel Wolfe, economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Her recent piece is titled America’s Young Men Are Falling Even Further Behind, and we're taking your calls if this experience is something that you relate to or if you're a parent or family member who has seen this happen to your children, and I think that's what we're going to hear from Angelika in Brooklyn. Thanks for calling WNYC.

Angelika: Hi, Brigid. I would have had my 22-year-old son call in, but he's still sleeping and not working. Everything resonates. It's a layered, nuanced, I think, conversation. I'm glad that Rachel raised and you all were talking about the cost of living in New York City because that's definitely a factor, I think, for everyone, and especially for young people. We're in Brooklyn, and it's really expensive to not live at home besides all that.

My son tried college for a few semesters, worked for a little bit here and there, but the upshot is he's trying to find his way. He does feel isolated, I think. I think he definitely feels like he's struggling to figure out what it is that he wants to do. I absolutely agree that there's work out there that's not necessarily work that he's interested in or prepared to do. This opportunity and skill gap situation, I think a little bit related to the workforce conversation you were having in the previous segment.

That's really real, I think, too. Also, he's a young person. He wants to make, not a lot of money, but he wants to make a good amount of money in there. Yes, there's a lot of work, but there's not necessarily a lot of work that's paying very well. I think there's a lot of variables and a lot of nuance in this conversation, but it definitely hits home for us. I appreciate you making time for it.

Brigid Bergin: Angelika, thank you so much for that call. Rachel, the point she raises connects well to something that you cite in your reporting. A survey that found nearly two-thirds of the 18 to 30-year-old men polled last year said that nobody knew them well, and a quarter said that they hadn't seen anyone outside their home in the past week. There's a real social isolation that that points to. Why are men struggling socially so much these days as well?

Rachel Wolfe: It's pretty jarring. That was actually where we found one of the biggest gaps was in. There's also this Time Spent Alone survey that's conducted every year, and we're seeing a widening gap there as well, where men 18 to 30 spent 18% more time alone last year than in 2019. That's also 22% more alone time than reported by women in the same age range. That gap is really quite stark. Now, there are a couple of things going on. Men are a little bit less able to bounce back from a setback for whatever reason, and they rely more on in-person activities to stay connected.

When those went away during the pandemic, men had fewer opportunities than women to keep those connections alive. There's also all the usual things that we all know like men are socialized to not talk about their feelings in the same way. When you're experiencing something like a global pandemic, that is really, really hard. We've known those things to be true for a while, but there's a real economic effect. There's a real effect on not just men's day-to-day interpersonal interactions, but on their experience in the world writ large.

Brigid Bergin: I want to bring in a few more of our callers before we wrap up. Let's go to Bob in West Chester. Bob, thanks for calling.

Bob: Hey. Thanks for having me. This is Bob, a 28-year-old from South Salem, New York, which is Westchester County. I think there's a few macro-trends going on resulting. I live at home with my mom. I think what we're seeing, and especially in a place in the metropolitan area, is an area where it's culturally focused on jobs that are in the services sector, whether it be finance, insurance, other white-collar type service jobs.

That's what's been valued in an agenda that pushes to get a college degree, studying something like finance, and then go into those jobs. I think we're seeing a decline in the jobs where most of us have then come out of school in debt and then been forced to work in those [inaudible 00:18:25] where it's often--

Brigid Bergin: I think Bob, we're losing his line. Bob, I appreciate your perspective. We're going to see maybe if we can get Bob's line fixed, but in the meantime, I want to go to Julie in Brooklyn, who has another perspective on this experience, again from a parent. Julie, thanks for calling.

Julie: Hi there. Thanks for having me. My son is 19 years old, neurodiverse, and went to a specialized school from fourth grade to 12th grade, where he did moderately well. I'm a single gay mom, but I do have traditional views regarding gender. I think what was missing from my son and what is still missing was a vocational track. He's a hands-on kid, and there were no opportunities for hands-on experience. It was traditional learning, while also, accommodating the learning challenges.

There was no mentorship there for young men. There was no vocational track for a guy like him. He graduated, he has no interest in college, and he's sitting home lost. It's painful to see. I just think we need more vocational opportunities for young men. Women are great in speech, and language, and emotion, as was stated, and men have needs too, that are not being addressed. It's really heartbreaking. Thank you for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Julie. Thanks so much for your call. I think we've got Bob's line back. Bob, just in our last minute, I want to give you a chance to finish the point you were making.

Julie: I'm seeing a trend, like the previous caller mentioned, towards vocational jobs, but there's a low in demand for those. I'm working in a mechanic shop right now, and I'm someone who spent a quarter of a million dollars on a finance degree and worked at banks and come out of that balding and with gray hair looking for a job, but the jobs that are in the blue-collar economy right now often revolve around-- It's easy to get a job in a fulfillment warehouse.

It's easy to get a job as a delivery driver for Amazon. I live on a dead-end dirt road, and I've got five different delivery trucks coming down the road. I think it starts as a consumer in what we're valuing in those trades. Are there more farm-based jobs since we've seen a constant decline from the 1950s in the agricultural sector? Is it mechanical? What are these other trades that we're willing to actually spend money on and teach kids?

I didn't learn it in high school, and I know that I came from Montana, and there's there's schools in Montana where kids are being forced to take car mechanics classes throughout high school. How do we reevaluate the education system, and as a consumer, where we're placing value?

Brigid Bergin: Bob, thanks so much for that call. I really appreciate it. Rachel, just as we wrap up here, I want to raise some of the pushback that some of our listeners are texting and that they have shared, saying that some of what we're talking about here in terms of seeking different job training or the challenges of entering the workforce or entering adulthood, these are challenges that face women as well. One of the things we didn't get into either is how some of this breaks down along racial lines.

I'm wondering if you can speak to what was the prompt for you to look at this issue. Your focus of your piece is very explicitly about the way men are struggling. You've looked at some of the data that supports why there is this gender gap there, but I wonder if you could speak a little bit more into how you started on this path of reporting.

Rachel Wolfe: Yes, sure. The listeners are absolutely right that plenty of young women are struggling, too, but the data shows young men are struggling more. Researchers called it, there's this broader mental health crisis that is facing young people generally. Then on top of that, there is this crisis of purpose that young men in particular are feeling. I would never disagree that there are people of all genders who are struggling.

It is not a phenomenon that is unique to boys, but we felt that it was worth calling this out in particular. It's personal. I feel like I look around at the young men that-- I know my family friends, my brother's friends, he's in college, and iit feels true. It's like you have enough conversations and you have to ask yourself, "What is going on here?" At no point did I think that I was discovering this. There's been a lot of research and writing done on this topic.

One thing we didn't get into here, too, is the suicide rate, and it's actually up the most for young men. It is no longer these deaths of despair in middle age that are driving the increase in the suicide rate. It is young men, and we are losing a lot more years of life now as a result. For me, that's what feels like the real crisis. I didn't get into the race gap so much because poor white men are actually doing the worst as far as mobility is concerned, and young Black men have made some strides, but they are still up against so many more challenges that it wasn't really-- The difference was small enough.

I didn't want to make it seem like young Black men suddenly have it easy because they very much do not, but it's actually interestingly poor young white men who are the most angry, who feel the most like the opportunities in front of them have regressed. I think it is true that there are fewer opportunities in these professions that men traditionally wanted to go into. That feeling is absolutely correct.

Brigid Bergin: Rachel, I want to thank you so much for your reporting, for looking at the data. As you said, there's much more to unpack here. I encourage listeners to check out the piece that Rachel wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It's called America’s Young Men Are Falling Even Further Behind. My guest has been Rachel Wolfe, economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Rachel, thanks so much for coming on.

Rachel Wolfe: Thanks so much for having me.

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