Too Many Young Men Still Aren’t Working
Mid-career men are returning to the American workforce, but younger men are lagging behind.
Don't blame video games.
Photographer: BloombergIn January 2010, with the Great Recession technically over but employers not yet adding jobs, a breakthrough in American labor markets and gender relations transpired. That month, a higher percentage of women aged 20 through 24 were employed than men in that age range. This was, as best I can tell, the first time women in any of the age brackets tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics had ever outdone their male peers in employment-population ratio, or Epop.
It was also the last. As soon as hiring started again, young men returned to the workforce more rapidly than young women, and young men’s Epop went back to being several percentage points higher than young women’s.