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posted by janrinok on Monday December 15 2014, @03:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the chasing-the-vanishing-jobs? dept.

Binyamin Appelbaum writes at the NYT that the share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent as many men have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment. Technology has made unemployment less lonely says Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, who argues that the Internet allows men to entertain themselves and find friends and sexual partners at a much lower cost than did previous generations. Perhaps most important, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs as foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs open to high school graduates. The trend was pushed to new heights by the last recession, with 20 percent of prime-age men not working in 2009 before partly receding. But the recovery is unlikely to be complete. "Like turtles flipped onto their backs, many people who stop working struggle to get back on their feet," writes Appelbaum. "Some people take years to return to the work force, and others never do "

A study published in October by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies estimated that 37 percent of the decline in male employment since 1979 can be explained by this retreat from marriage and fatherhood (PDF). “When the legal, entry-level economy isn’t providing a wage that allows someone a convincing and realistic option to become an adult — to go out and get married and form a household — it demoralizes them and shunts them into illegal economies,” says Philippe Bourgois, an anthropologist who has studied the lives of young men in urban areas. “It’s not a choice that has made them happy. They would much rather be adults in a respectful job that pays them and promises them benefits.”

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 15 2014, @06:49PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 15 2014, @06:49PM (#126252)

    From my own observation your list of 6 criteria for men (and women) would seem to change it from a study of human mating habits to a study of unicorn mating habits.

    In a city of eight million those criteria are so rare we may as well list the individuals by name not just count them. So Sally can't meet Harry because there's 7.999998 million other people who don't meet the criteria standing in the way, etc. Maybe online dating will help.

    historically, this usually resulted in ...

    Not just your economic activities, but also warfare. If I were Canada I'd be worried... you got world class maple syrup, hockey, women, and health care and we want them...

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  • (Score: 1) by iamjacksusername on Monday December 15 2014, @07:31PM

    by iamjacksusername (1479) on Monday December 15 2014, @07:31PM (#126269)

    I agree the list makes some pretty big generalizations, is very NE US-specific, and certainly does not account for outliers. However, having been in the NE US dating pool in large cities, that list definitely holds up. I think it is a very strong statement on the economic status of large groups of men in our society where simply having some very basic requirements that, 30 years ago, nobody would have given a second thought to, makes someone a unicorn (excluding the racial dynamic but that is very complicated and out of scope for a short reply).