Rov_Scam
9hr ago
Charts I'm seeing show the prime age male labor force participation rate to be at 89.5% as of last September, and the lowest it ever was was in April 2020, at 86.3%. This decline has been more or less steady since the early 1960s, though local drops seem to happen concurrent with economic downturns. If you look at prime age female labor participation rate, it's a much different story. When this started being tracked in the mid 1950s it was around 40%. It hit 50% in 1970, 60% in 1978, and 70% in 1985. From there, though, growth slowed; it took until 1997 to hit 77%, and from there it's more or less plateaued in the mid-70s. At most recent count it stands at 77.7%, which is close to an all-time high, but it's not much above where it was 30 years ago. If female labor force participation rate had much to do with male labor force participation rate you'd expect to see the largest drops in the male rate correspond to the largest gains in the female rate. The female rate jumped 20 points between 1970 and 1985, while the male rate dropped 1 point. The male rate dropped 1.5 points between 1997 and the present, while the female rate didn't change at all.
If you want to drill down to the real reason working-age men aren't working, you have to look at more detailed data about exactly who these people are. There are about 64 million prime-age men in the US, and about 7.36 million aren't looking for work. Before we can go any further, there are two things we need to get out of the way. The first is that approximately 900,000 prime-age men are currently incarcerated, accounting for about 1/8 of the total. This is probably an undercount, as the numbers I used don't include people in local jails who, whether awaiting trial or serving sentences of less than two years are largely out of the labor force. I don't know what your opinion on work-release programs is, but I doubt it would be wise to allow all of them to have regular jobs, and since it's an undercount anyway I'll assume we both agree that these people shouldn't be working and omit them, which lowers the current rate to around 90.9%.
Second, according to the New York Fed, about 7% of prime-age people have a disability of some kind. The numbers aren't broken down by sex, so I'll assume they're similar for men and women. That gives us 4.48 million prime age men who have disabilities. I should add that the numbers come from the US Census, so this means that they consider themselves disabled, not that they're getting Social Security disability payments. Among disabled people, 45% are employed. I don't have workforce participation numbers, but given the current unemployment rate of 4.4%, and that disabled people have more trouble finding work than healthy people, we'll say that the disabled unemployment rate is 5%, which gives us a nice 50% labor participation rate. Of course, a lot of these people could probably work if push came to shove, since self-identification is the only criterion. I hate to hazard a guess, but for the sake of argument I'll assume that half of those who identify as disabled could work if they absolutely had to. This means that there are roughly 1.1 million truly disabled people in the 25-54 age bracket. Adding it to our incarcerated population gives us 2 million people who aren't working because they actually can't. That brings the rate up to 92.6%
That's an improvement but it's still far below 1960s rates and doesn't account for the entire phenomenon. Labor participation rates tend to be highest in big, trendy cities like Denver and San Francisco, and in places like oil boom towns in West Texas. The rates tend to be lowest in Rust Belt cities, Appalachia, and depopulated rural areas. These men are also disproportionately poorly educated, with either a high school diploma or less, and don't have much in the way of skills. Not coincidentally, this is the same demographic that's likely to have a drug problem, which probably also contributes to a lack of desire for work. In other words, these are the people who, if they had to get jobs, wouldn't get very pleasant jobs, or very high paying jobs. It makes sense that the labor force participation rate would go down over time as employers require more skilled workers and as the geography of employment changes.
All that being said, what it means is that the solutions aren't that sexy, and don't play into any culture war narratives. Saying we need to increase economic opportunities for unskilled workers in Youngstown or West Virginia is about the coldest take in American politics.
Rov_Scam
15hr ago
It's called different things in different states. In Pennsylvania it's called ARD, or accelerated rehabilitative disposition. It's mostly used for DUIs, but other categories of offenses are eligible as well.
Rov_Scam
17hr ago
He wasn't charged because he agreed to pay restitution. Most jurisdictions have diversion programs for first time offenders where they're given what amounts to probation except rather than complete the probation after conviction they agree to do it immediately, and the charges are dropped once the conditions are complied with. The ice sculpture guy may be offered a similar deal, though it should be noted that that just happened the other day, so one wouldn't expect the case to be resolved for a while.
Only increases the chance that you are the same person. Rov_scam is one of my favorite posters. Everything he says is brilliant and I agree with it 100%!
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