THE EMPLOYMENT rate among American men reached its lowest level in 63 years this summer. Not since 1948 had so relatively few men held jobs. But the news was already bad. The median annual earnings of all men 30 to 50 years old, including those who did not work, fell 27 percent from 1969 to 2009. 

When men are underemployed as a group, the consequences for society at large are far more dire than when women are unemployed in high numbers.

In fact, when women are unemployed, as history clearly shows us, the consequences are good. Society functions better when women are not working outside the home and are raising the workers of tomorrow. When men are unemployed at high levels, marriage declines, illegitimacy increases, crime increases, and overall social dysfunction follows.

We live in a world of fantastic denial of these facts, a world in which intractable differences in work motivations and performance between men and women are also categorically rejected. As we speak, companies continue to be hauled into court for the offense of employing men over women. Immense resources and vast sums of money are devoted to improving the confidence and work performance of women. 

Is it any surprise the figures are so grim? In August, Mike Dorning of Bloomberg Businessweek wrote:

Among the critical category of prime working-age men between 25 and 54, only 81.2 percent held jobs, a barely noticeable improvement from its low point last year, and still well below the depths of the 1982-83 recession, when employment among prime-age men never dropped below 85 percent. To put those numbers in perspective, consider that in 1969, 95 percent of men in their prime working years had a job.

Men who do have jobs are getting paid less. After accounting for inflation, median wages for men between 30 and 50 dropped 27 percent–to $33,000 a year from 1969 to 2009, according to an analysis by Michael Greenstone, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who was chief economist for Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

In pondering why men lag, Dorning writes:

But for reasons not fully understood, college graduation rates essentially stopped growing for men in the late 1970s, shortly after the Vietnam War ended, perhaps in part because draft deferments were no longer an inducement.

“For reasons not fully understood?” Dorning must live in a sealed cave.

He may have slept for the past sixty years. As George Gilder wrote in Visible Man (ICS Press, 1995), during that time “under the pressure of an imperious feminism, all the public institutions of society –  from government to Hollywood – launched an obsessive and successful effort to increase the earnings of women and to enhance their sexual independence and aggressiveness.” 

We can fully understand the reasons why men lag if we examine the feminization of education and the workplace. When men are forced to compete with women, a significant minority of them become apathetic and unmotivated. This is a perennial fact of human psychology. Feminized education bores the hell out of men. Only a person living in a cave could have failed to notice that men have been forced to give up sports teams in the wake of Title IX and that many institutions are ridden with the mission of enforcing reparations for female underperformance in the past. Medical and law schools now accept women at equal rates to men. This is so even though female doctors and lawyers have a far higher drop out rate once they achieve established careers. How could these equal numbers hold unless women weren’t being significantly favored? 

There is one bright spot. We know what works. We know without a shadow of a doubt that when society devotes its energies to improving the work performance of one sex at the expense of the other, vast change is possible.

So now let’s reverse the process. 

As Gilder wrote, “government training funds, job preferences, and other interventions must be channeled chiefly toward boys and men.” Affirmative action for women should end and non-mandatory, non-governmental preferences for men should exist as they once did. Honesty should prevail in fields where there are now high rates of female attrition due to motherhood. The quixotic and dishonest goal of “flexibility” in jobs should end, replaced by the understanding that merit and hard work are what matter most in employment.

Single sex education is a pressing need. Women are not going to college and graduating at far higher rates because they are smarter than men. Masculine competitiveness is good for men, and should be encouraged in boys. It is not good for women, and should be discouraged in girls.

Welfare benefits of all kinds should be denied to unmarried women, removing a major incentive for poor men to decline work. As Gilder wrote, “Deadbeat dad crusades should give way to the contrary principle that a woman’s claim on a man for support – and a man’s access to children – both come exclusively through the institution of marriage.” 

The underemployment of men is not just the result of the technological revolution, the loss of factory jobs or globalization. It is the desired outcome of years of concerted effort to create economic autonomy for women and to undermine the male provider. The underemployment of men is arguably not just a consequence of the lagging economy but a major cause of it. Vibrant economies are not found where male apathy is encouraged.

 [CORRECTION: Originally, this post said that the earnings of working men had fallen 27 percent from 1969 to 2009. The earnings of all men, working or not, have fallen by that amount in the forty-year time period.]

                                                       — Comments–

Buck O. writes: 

Would you mind explaining this more fully: “Deadbeat dad crusades should give way to the contrary principle that a woman’s claim on a man for support – and a man’s access to children – both come exclusively through the institution of marriage.” 

I’m think that I understand what Gilder and you mean, but I’m not certain.

Laura writes:

The government should not be demanding child support from men who were never married to the mothers of their children or aiding children through public assistance to their unmarried mothers. 

Jesse Powell writes: 

I find it interesting that in the Bloomberg Businessweek article no cultural factors are mentioned at all that might explain men’s declining participation in the work force and their declining wages compared to women. The article does however contain some obligatory cheerleading for feminism when it states: “They (women) continue to earn about 16 percent less than men and struggle against gender discrimination and career interruptions as they disproportionately take time away from the job to raise children. And both men and women have confronted job losses in the weak economy.” 

Since 1960, men’s participation in the workforce has declined while women’s has increased. This is not a coincidence, men either giving up on being breadwinners or being shoved out of the breadwinner role goes along with women’s increased participation in the workforce. Also, both trends are bad and go with each other. The perfect world is not a world where all adults work; men not working is harmful and at the same time women working is an additional harm. It is very interesting that overall economic output did not increase at all compared to earlier trends with the huge increase of women entering the workforce; it is as if all of women’s work efforts have been wasted even when looking at only the material realm. 

In addition to the folly of women working I would like to add that men having control of the family finances is probably a very beneficial thing for family financial stability and even the stability of the economy overall. In 1970, when men were still very much in the breadwinner role and presumably were in control of family finances the great majority of the time the household savings rate was very high; few families entered bankruptcy and the economy overall was able to invest based on savings; something that is required for long term economic stability. 

Below is a chart comparing the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) for white and black men from January 1972 to January 2011 looking at the prime earning years of 25 to 54 years old. Of note the white LFPR has fallen about the same amount as the black LFPR over this period and currently the white LFPR is similar to what the black LFPR was in 1972. 

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate of Men 25 to 54 Years Old

Source: Economagic.com: Economic Time Series Page and Economic Time Series Page

Laura writes:

I don’t think it is necessarily true that men controlled household finances more often when they were the sole breadwinner. Wives, even when they do not work, often manage the finances. I think the declining savings rate has more to do with the inability of households to manage their budgets when neither husbands or wives have the time to focus on it. There is much more impulsive buying. There are certainly other factors in the declining savings rate too.

Fred Owens writes:

I don’t think it is necessarily true that men controlled household finances more often when they were the sole breadwinner.

My Dad published a small fishing magazine and he went to his office everyday and managed a staff of four people. The office was about a fifteen minute walk from our house and he often came home for lunch. My Mom kept the books for the magazine and she worked on a desk at home. He worked full-time on the magazine and she worked part-time and the rest of her time was devoted to home-making. They were true partners. We children were not privy to their financial negotiations and discussions, but I have a feeling decisions were jointly arrived at. Except in the matter of buying new cars. The fishing magazine did well and my Dad bought a new car whenever he felt like it, and I don’t think he asked Mom ahead of time. Looking back on this, I think they had the best of all possible arrangements.

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