Unemployment Numbers Huge for Men : Men Happy to Sit Home?

Technology is the problem? Overseas competition is the problem? What ever happened to people understanding they are what they are because of who they believe they are.

Worse maybe is that there are many in authority that are telling the unemployed that they are can do what ever they want as they have that right. Remember Nancy Pelosi saying because of ObamaCare people don't to worry about having a corporate insurance program now so they can be unemployed, pursue a new life style and have insurance? Progressive socialism at work?

Given the 'me first' attitude, it make sense that industry will find ways to do without the worker and the demands that they have to make their personal lives easier and more fulfilling. Overseas competition has a different take on what the meaning of work actually is what it costs to make things happen.

Naturally with the corporate tax rates in this country being the highest in the world, it also make sense industry will go where the taxes are the lowest.

Unfortunately, as so many men are leaving the work force and deciding not to return, and seem happy to do so, it does not bode well for our society when those that seem fat and happy now, doing nothing, begin to understand that they are being left behind, and demand more free stuff to maintain a new and better life style. What then?

The Vanishing Male Worker
Source:  Binyamin Applebaum, "The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind," New York Times, December 11, 2014.

December 15, 2014

Since the late 1960s, the portion of working-age men (between 25 and 54 years of age) who are out of the workforce has more than tripled and sits at 16 percent today. Binyamin Applebaum of the New York Times reports on the growing number of men who are not working in today's economy.

There are many men and women among the 30 million unemployed Americans between the ages of 25 and 54 who are anxious to find work, but there are also a number who are not so anxious -- according to a new poll from the New York Times, CBS News and the Kaiser Family Foundation:

• Thirty-four percent of unemployed adults in the 25-to-54 age group want a full-time job.
• Twenty-three percent want a part-time job.
• Twenty percent "will want a job in the future."
• Twelve percent don't want a job now, or in the future.
• Of those who were unemployed but able to work, just 67 percent said they wanted a full-time job and 19 percent wanted a part-time job.

Applebaum cites a number of factors that have increased the number of men not seeking work, including the increased availability of disability benefits and the drop in marriage rates (meaning there are fewer children to provide for). He also notes that technology, as well as competition abroad, has reduced the number of high-paying, low-skilled jobs that many men would have taken in years past.

According to the New York Times poll, 85 percent of unemployed men in their prime do not have bachelor's degrees, while 34 percent have criminal records.