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posted by janrinok on Sunday October 09 2016, @03:39AM   Printer-friendly

The "quiet catastrophe" is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great Depression in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14 percent. If the labor-force participation rate were as high today as it was as recently as 2000, nearly 10 million more Americans would have jobs.

The work rate for adult men has plunged 13 percentage points in a half-century. This "work deficit" of "Great Depression-scale underutilization" of male potential workers is the subject of Nicholas Eberstadt's new monograph "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis," which explores the economic and moral causes and consequences of this:

Is it an aberration, or a harbinger of things to come?


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:27AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:27AM (#411928) Journal

    There's also the possibility of strapping on a powered exoskeleton that could enable women to lift and move things that couldn't be lifted by men today. A robotic semi-automated equalizer.

    Aside from leveling the playing field, it could also increase productivity and decrease the need for as many laborers.

    I don't know of this being done on any large scale, but the technology is around, and it could act as another incentive to shape up a flawed economy.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:24AM (#411947)

    Women working in the heat and humidity?

    Oppressive shitlord.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:18PM (#412159)

      > Oppressive shitlord.

      Its funny how the only people who say "shitlord" are the ones who think they are mocking feminists. Kind of like how the only people who say "fly over states" are the ones who thinking they are mocking liberals who live in coastal states. Its one of those few words where the ironic usage says everything about the user, usually its a non-ironic usage that is revealing.