Men Without Work
Buy on Amazon — Men Without Work
Position in the vault
This note belongs with work on labor markets, welfare states, family formation, criminal justice, and American social decline. Nicholas Eberstadt's central object is not unemployment as normally reported, but the growing population of prime-age American men who are neither working nor looking for work.
Detailed overview
Eberstadt argues that the United States has hidden a male work crisis inside an apparently rich economy. The book begins from the contrast between conventional optimism about wealth and employment and the collapse of work rates for men between 1965 and 2015. His preferred measures are the employment-to-population ratio, labor force participation rate, prime-age male NILF status, and the estimated jobs deficit against mid-1960s work patterns.
The book is built as a statistical indictment of the unemployment rate. Eberstadt contends that unemployment no longer captures the main male joblessness problem because millions of men have exited the labor force altogether. In his account, a 2015 economy described by Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, Martin Feldstein, and journalists as near full employment still contained roughly 7.2 million prime-age male NILFs and a corrected male jobs deficit approaching 10 million for men twenty to sixty-four.
Eberstadt's explanation is deliberately plural but weighted toward supply and institutional factors. He acknowledges demand-side pressures such as globalization, technological change, import competition, offshoring, weaker growth, and declining manufacturing demand, and he discusses the Council of Economic Advisers' demand-side account. But he pushes back by stressing the steady post-1965 LFPR decline, higher participation among low-skill immigrants, state-level differences such as West Virginia versus Iowa, and the contrast with Japan and other OECD countries.
The middle chapters describe who the un-working men are and what they do. Eberstadt emphasizes overrepresentation among black men, men with low educational attainment, unmarried men, men without children at home, native-born men, men receiving disability or means-tested benefits, and men with criminal records. He also uses ATUS, ASEC, SIPP, GSS, CEX, and NLSY data to describe time use, income sources, disability recipiency, welfare dependence, household consumption, drug use, voting, religious attendance, and the relationship between arrest or prison history and labor force absence.
The policy chapter is intentionally less detailed than the diagnosis. Eberstadt calls for more business dynamism, reform of disability and welfare programs around a work-first principle, and better data and experimentation on reentry for ex-prisoners and felons. Henry Olsen and Jared Bernstein then challenge parts of the account: Olsen emphasizes demand shocks, deindustrialization, disability as lifeboat, and the post-draft military decline; Bernstein argues the problem is already known, more cyclical than Eberstadt allows, and better addressed by labor demand, direct job creation, EITC expansion, higher minimum wages, subsidized employment, and criminal justice reform. Eberstadt's response accepts that demand matters but insists that motivation, welfare/disability financing, and criminal-justice history remain underweighted.
Source links
Chapter-by-chapter notes
Introduction
Summary: Eberstadt opens by naming a "quiet catastrophe": the collapse of work for American men over the half century from 1965 to 2015. He says more than seven million men ages twenty-five to fifty-five were jobless and no longer looking for work, and he stresses that the 2015 work rate for men ages twenty-five to fifty-four was slightly lower than in 1940, near the end of the Great Depression. The introduction frames this as an invisible crisis because there are no national strikes, riots, or obvious public disturbances, and because a rich America can carry men who have become economically dispensable. It also makes the crisis economic, social, and moral by linking lower growth, family breakdown, dependence on wives, girlfriends, aging parents, or government, and the loss of self-reliance. Source anchors: 1965 to 2015, seven million, twenty-five to fifty-five, 1940, Great Depression, self-reliance.
Analysis: The introduction's 1965-to-2015 baseline and seven million men define the population Eberstadt wants readers to see. The comparison with 1940 and the Great Depression challenges full-employment language by shifting attention from unemployment to work rates. Self-reliance places the diagnosis inside Language and Ideology: Eberstadt treats paid work not only as income production but as the moral vocabulary connecting prime-age men to family, civic duty, and adult independence.
The Collapse of Work in the Second Gilded Age
Summary: The first chapter contrasts rising wealth with poor labor-market performance in the twenty-first-century United States. Eberstadt cites household and nonprofit net worth rising to $87 trillion by 2015, U.S. possession of 34 percent of world household wealth, Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy, a weak recovery after the 2008 crash, and per capita output barely 3 percent above late-2007 levels by early 2016. He then turns to employment-to-population ratios, arguing that adult work rates fell by over four percentage points after 2000 and that roughly 10 million more Americans would be working if start-of-century work rates had persisted. The chapter ends by narrowing the focus to men: adult male work rates have fallen by more than eighteen percentage points since the early 1950s, and the Great Recession accounts for only part of that long decline. Source anchors: $87 trillion, 34 percent, zero interest rate, 2008 crash, per capita output, 10 million, eighteen percentage points.
Analysis: The $87 trillion and 34 percent figures make the United States look rich enough to hide social damage, while zero interest rate policy lets Eberstadt question how real that prosperity feels outside asset markets. The 2008 crash and per capita output data show why macroeconomic recovery alone cannot explain his concern. The 10 million work-rate counterfactual and eighteen percentage points in male decline turn the chapter from general economic malaise to a specifically male labor-force problem.
Hiding in Plain Sight: An Army of Jobless Men, Lost in an Overlooked Depression
Summary: This chapter attacks the claim that the United States was near full employment in 2015 and 2016. Eberstadt quotes optimistic assessments from Bloomberg, FiveThirtyEight, the Wall Street Journal, Ben Bernanke, Martin Feldstein, and Janet Yellen, then argues that these views miss employment-to-population collapse among men. He reports that work rates for men twenty and older fell from 85.8 percent in 1948 to 68.2 percent in 2015, that nearly 22 percent of men twenty to sixty-four were not in paid work, and that prime-age male work rates fell from 94.1 percent in 1948 to 84.3 percent in 2015. He compares 2015 rates to the 1930 and 1940 censuses, then estimates a corrected 2015 jobs deficit approaching 10 million men after allowing for education and training. Source anchors: Bernanke, Yellen, 85.8 percent, 68.2 percent, 94.1 percent, 84.3 percent, 10 million.
Analysis: Bernanke and Yellen serve as foils because their full-employment language depends on measures Eberstadt thinks make male nonwork illegible. The 85.8-to-68.2 percent and 94.1-to-84.3 percent comparisons turn Legibility into a statistical choice: unemployment counts active job seekers, while employment-population ratios retain men who have stopped looking. The 10 million estimate converts that definitional difference into a missing workforce large enough to alter the national diagnosis.
Postwar America's Great Male Flight from Work
Summary: Eberstadt explains why a 10-million-man work deficit did not produce obvious crisis. First, women's paid employment rose sharply after World War II: women ages twenty-five to fifty-four went from a 34 percent work rate in 1948 to over 70 percent in 2015, masking male decline in overall adult work rates. Second, many men moved into a third status beyond employed or unemployed: neither working nor seeking work. By 2015, prime-age male NILFs numbered over 7 million, compared with just under 1.1 million in 1965, and there were roughly three inactive prime-age men for every unemployed prime-age man. Eberstadt also uses NEET language, school-enrollment adjustments, and Council of Economic Advisers cohort data to argue that each younger male cohort is less attached to the labor force than older cohorts. Source anchors: women's work, 34 percent, 70 percent, 7 million, 1.1 million, three inactive, NEET.
Analysis: Women's work explains why male decline remained hidden inside aggregate employment statistics: rising female participation offset falling male attachment. The 7 million and 1.1 million comparison exposes a failure of Information and Coordination because public debate coordinates around the unemployment rate while three inactive men exist for every unemployed man. NEET status removes schooling as an easy explanation and shows how the headline measure directs attention away from persistent labor-force exit.
America's Great Male Flight from Work in Historical and International Perspective
Summary: This chapter argues that American male nonwork is not a normal byproduct of affluence. Eberstadt accepts that richer societies buy more free time and cites Robert Fogel, Dora Costa, retirement, and the shortening of work hours since the nineteenth century. He then shows that prime-age American men are unusual among affluent countries: in 2014 the United States ranked twenty-second out of twenty-three traditional OECD countries for prime-age male labor force participation, ahead only of Italy. He contrasts the United States with France, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Japan, noting that Greece and France had prime-age male LFPRs roughly five percentage points higher than the United States and that Japan's lost decades still produced much less male workforce exit. He also stresses the coexistence of long work hours for employed Americans with an unusually large caste of men doing no paid work. Source anchors: Robert Fogel, Dora Costa, OECD, Italy, Greece, France, Japan, overworked American.
Analysis: Robert Fogel and Dora Costa let Eberstadt separate ordinary leisure gains from the disappearance of prime-age men from work altogether. The OECD and Italy ranking is his blunt international comparison, while Greece, France, and Japan are chosen because weak growth or rigid labor markets should have made them worse if macro conditions were the whole story. The overworked American contrast matters because it shows a split labor order: employed Americans work many hours while a large male group contributes no paid hours.
Who Is He? A Statistical Portrait of the Un-Working American Man
Summary: Eberstadt profiles prime-age male NILFs by race, education, marriage, family structure, and nativity. He says exit from the workforce explains seven-eighths of the prime-age male work-rate drop from 1965 to 2015, and that two-thirds of men out of the labor force for part of 2014 were out for the whole year. In 2015, black men made up about twice the share of prime-age NILFs that they did of job holders, men without high school diplomas were more than twice as likely to be un-working, married men were three-fifths of job holders but about one-third of NILFs, never-married men were overrepresented among NILFs, and foreign-born men were more likely to work than native-born men. The chapter then argues that education gains actually buoyed male work rates, while declining marriage and family structure pulled them down. Source anchors: seven-eighths, two-thirds, black men, high school diplomas, married men, never-married, foreign-born.
Analysis: Seven-eighths makes labor-force exit the main fact to explain, and two-thirds makes it persistent rather than a brief pause. Black men and high-school diplomas identify concentrated disadvantage, but married, never-married, and foreign-born comparisons move the argument toward Informal Institutions. Eberstadt treats marriage, fatherhood, household expectations, and immigrant norms as social structures that create or weaken work obligations even when formal education and labor law remain similar.
Idle Hands: Time Use, Social Participation, and the Male Flight from Work
Summary: Eberstadt turns from labor statistics to daily life, using ASEC, SIPP, ATUS, and GSS data to ask what prime-age male NILFs do. He distinguishes leisure from idleness through Josef Pieper, Max Weber, and William Beveridge, then reports that only about 15 percent of prime-age men who did not work at all in 2014 said they could not find work. He emphasizes that caregiving accounts for only a small share of male nonwork, then uses ATUS to show NILF men spending seven minutes a day on work-related activity, nearly eight hours a day on socializing, relaxing, and leisure, five and a half hours a day on television and movies, and less time volunteering, attending worship, reading newspapers, voting, or caring for others than many comparison groups. GSS data show illegal drug use reported by 31 percent of prime-age male un-workers in 2004, compared with 8 percent of working men. Source anchors: Josef Pieper, Beveridge, 15 percent, seven minutes, eight hours, television and movies, 31 percent.
Analysis: Josef Pieper and Beveridge supply a Moral Economy of leisure in which freedom from labor remains tied to contribution, cultivation, or care. The 15 percent response challenges a purely involuntary-unemployment account, while seven minutes of job search and eight hours of screen time make the daily schedule visible. Television, movies, and 31 percent drug-use reporting support Eberstadt's claim that NILF time often lacks the reciprocal activities that would legitimate dependence.
Long-Term Structural Forces and the Decline of Work for American Men
Summary: This chapter addresses demand-side explanations before Eberstadt turns to welfare and criminal justice. He summarizes the Council of Economic Advisers' 2016 report, which emphasizes declining demand for less-skilled labor, stagnant wages, skill-biased technological change, globalization, import competition, offshoring, middle-skill job loss, and manufacturing decline. Eberstadt accepts that these forces matter but argues they cannot fully explain the uniquely American pattern. He stresses the clocklike decline in prime-age male LFPRs through seven recessions between 1965 and 2015, the contrast with women's rising work rates through the late 1990s, Japan's stronger participation despite lost decades, the 24-point gap between less-educated native-born and foreign-born men by 2015, and state variation such as West Virginia above 20 percent NILF versus Iowa near 6 percent. Source anchors: Council of Economic Advisers, less-skilled labor, seven recessions, Japan, foreign-born, West Virginia, Iowa.
Analysis: The Council of Economic Advisers and less-skilled labor place Eberstadt inside the demand-side debate over globalization and Technological Change. Seven recessions and Japan are used to argue that automation, import competition, and slow growth do not map neatly onto the steady American LFPR decline. Foreign-born attachment and the West Virginia-Iowa contrast push the explanation toward mobility, disability systems, and local norms rather than treating declining demand as a complete mechanism.
Dependence, Disability, and Living Standards for Un-Working Men
Summary: Eberstadt examines how NILF men live with little earned income. In 2014, the median earned income for prime-age male NILFs was zero and the average was about $4,500, while working men had a median of $44,000 and mean near $57,000. Yet NILF households reported median income near $25,000 and mean income above $41,000, with support from spouses, other household members, and government benefits. SIPP data show that in 2013, 63 percent of homes with un-working men received means-tested benefits, 41 percent received SNAP, 53 percent Medicaid, and 57 percent of prime-age un-working men lived in homes reporting disability benefits; two-thirds of NILF households reported disability-program income. CEX data then show nonworking male households with about $31,000 in expenditures, roughly fourth-decile consumption, and living standards above the bottom quintile despite little male earnings. Source anchors: median earned income, $4,500, $44,000, SIPP, 63 percent, SNAP, disability benefits, CEX.
Analysis: Median earned income of $4,500 versus $44,000 for employed men shows that NILF households cannot reproduce themselves through the man's wages. SIPP, 63 percent, SNAP, disability benefits, and CEX identify Financial Infrastructure that finances nonwork through public transfers, partner earnings, relatives, and pooled household consumption. Eberstadt does not call these households affluent; he argues that the combined channels make persistent labor-force absence materially sustainable.
Criminality and the Decline of Work for American Men
Summary: Eberstadt argues that criminal-justice history is a major omitted variable in male work decline. He ties the post-1965 male flight from work to the crime wave, Great Society, Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, and the later incarceration expansion. He estimates that by 2010 the United States had nearly 20 million current or former felons, over 14 million of them adult men no longer behind bars, and about 4.7 million adult male ex-prisoners. He uses Bruce Western and Becky Pettit's work on incarceration risk by race and education, then NLSY data prepared by Joe Price to show that men with prison time have lower employment and higher workforce absence than men with arrests only, who in turn fare worse than men never arrested or incarcerated. By 2012-13, men thirty to thirty-four with prison histories were about three times as likely to be out of the workforce as men never arrested or imprisoned. Source anchors: 1965, 20 million, 14 million, 4.7 million, Western and Pettit, NLSY, prison histories.
Analysis: The 1965 timing links criminal justice to the period in which male LFPR decline accelerates without making criminality the sole cause. The 20 million felony records, 14 million ex-prisoners, and 4.7 million former inmates show State Capacity creating a labor-market afterlife through arrest, incarceration, supervision, and durable records. Western, Pettit, NLSY, and prison histories connect those classifications to race, education, and employment, making reentry policy inseparable from any serious work agenda.
What Is to Be Done?
Summary: The policy chapter calls male nonwork a historically unprecedented problem and estimates that 9 to 10 million additional men would have jobs if 1965 male work rates still prevailed. Eberstadt lists economic harms such as slower growth, inequality, budget pressure, higher deficits, and poverty risk; social harms such as family breakdown, welfare dependence, disability as an alternative lifestyle, and support by women; and civic harms such as reduced voting, volunteering, community participation, and trust. He does not offer a full program, but he names three priorities: revitalizing business dynamism and entrepreneurship, reforming disability and welfare around a work-first principle, and developing evidence-based ways to bring ex-prisoners and felons into work. He cites Hathaway and Litan on declining business formation, Marie-Josee Kravis on slower churn, the 1990s welfare reform for single mothers, and the lack of data on ex-prisoners. Source anchors: 9 to 10 million, business dynamism, work-first, disability reform, Hathaway and Litan, welfare reform, ex-prisoners.
Analysis: The 9 to 10 million figure keeps the chapter tied to the statistical claim rather than a vague cultural complaint. Business dynamism is Eberstadt's growth-side answer, while work-first and disability reform are his incentive-side answer. Hathaway and Litan provide a business-formation diagnosis, and welfare reform gives him a precedent for changing benefit rules. Ex-prisoners are the hardest case because he admits the United States lacks the data and proven reentry methods that a serious policy effort would need.
Creating the Beginning of an End
Summary: Henry Olsen's response accepts the seriousness of Eberstadt's problem but argues that the book underexplains how male nonwork arose. Olsen focuses on labor-market change rather than simple welfare pull: the early-1970s shocks, deindustrialization, manufacturing decline, recessionary pushout, low and unstable wages, SSDI as a lifeboat, and immigrant men with lower alternatives and different expectations. He reads the employment-to-population ratio as showing that each recession after the 1970s pushed prime-age men out and that subsequent recoveries did not restore earlier peaks. Olsen also adds the post-Cold War reduction in U.S. military employment and the end of the draft as factors that removed a training and employment channel for lower-skilled men. Source anchors: Henry Olsen, early 1970s, deindustrialization, SSDI, immigrants, military, draft.
Analysis: Henry Olsen is important because he shares Eberstadt's alarm while shifting weight from moralized idleness to labor-market displacement. The early 1970s and deindustrialization identify the point where decent jobs for less-skilled men began to disappear in Olsen's account. SSDI is not treated mainly as temptation but as a lifeboat after recessionary pushout. Immigrants, military, and draft complicate the comparison groups because Olsen thinks foreign-born men and conscript-era men faced different choices, obligations, and fallback options.
A Well-Known Problem
Summary: Jared Bernstein's response praises the evidence but disputes the diagnosis and the claim that the issue is invisible to specialists. Bernstein points to labor economists, earlier New York Times reporting, President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, and jobs-day attention to labor force participation. He argues that Eberstadt overstates linear decline and understates cyclicality, especially for less-educated prime-age men, and that the evidence points more to work leaving men than men fleeing work. Bernstein emphasizes manufacturing loss, trade deficits, globalization, automation, the production-to-services shift, regional labor demand, racial discrimination, criminal records, construction demand for immigrant workers, and disability insurance as a response to weak demand rather than a primary cause. His remedies include stronger full-employment policy, EITC expansion for childless workers, higher minimum wages, paid leave, child care assistance, direct job creation, subsidized employment, and criminal justice reform. Source anchors: Jared Bernstein, cyclicality, manufacturing, trade deficits, disability insurance, EITC, direct job creation.
Analysis: Jared Bernstein matters because he turns the same male-work data toward demand policy rather than work-first welfare reform. Cyclicality challenges Eberstadt's straight-line presentation by showing that prime-age male employment responds to recoveries. Manufacturing and trade deficits are the missing industrial story Bernstein thinks Eberstadt underplays, while disability insurance becomes a symptom of weak labor demand. EITC and direct job creation show the policy split: Bernstein wants to make work available and rewarding before treating nonwork mainly as a supply-side failure.
A Response to Olsen and Bernstein
Summary: Eberstadt's reply says he and the respondents agree on the dimensions of the problem but disagree over diagnosis and prescription. He rejects Bernstein's claim that the crisis is broadly known, asking why the unemployment rate still dominates monthly labor-market coverage when three prime-age men are inactive for every one unemployed. He accepts demand-side factors but argues that supply and institutional factors must also be weighed, then adds a deindustrialization comparison showing that France, Sweden, and Australia also lost large manufacturing shares without matching the U.S. prime-age male LFPR collapse. He reiterates that welfare and disability did not necessarily cause male flight from work but financed it, citing more than half of prime-age NILFs getting disability money and two-thirds of NILF households receiving disability-program income. He closes by accepting Olsen's point about the draft and calling for better understanding of disconnected men's mindsets. Source anchors: unemployment rate, three prime-age men, France, Sweden, Australia, disability money, two-thirds, draft.
Analysis: The unemployment rate and three prime-age men restate Eberstadt's central measurement complaint after the critics press him. France, Sweden, and Australia are used to answer Bernstein's manufacturing objection by showing that deindustrialization alone cannot explain U.S. exceptionalism. Disability money and two-thirds clarify his causal claim: benefits may finance nonwork even if they did not start it. The draft concession to Olsen is notable because it admits that older institutions of male discipline and training may have supported work attachment in ways the contemporary labor market no longer does.