# Who needs work?

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2016-09-28

education, jobs, labor-force, men-without-work, training, uncategorized, unemployment

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Earlier this month, The Atlantic published an article called: [The Free-Time Paradox in America](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-free-time-paradox-in-america/499826/). The gist of the article was that the wealthy are increasingly starved for time, whereas the exact opposite is happening to the poor.

The article throws out this stat: _“In 2015, 22 percent of lower-skilled men \[those without a college degree\] aged 21 to 30 had not worked at all during the prior twelve months.”_

More recently, Larry Summers [published the following graph](http://larrysummers.com/2016/09/26/men-without-work/) on his blog, along with the prediction that by the middle of the 21st century over a third of men between 25 and 54 will no longer be working in America.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/70324b9cd31b63871fe8a224f9ab9755.png)

He cites technology and declining marriage rates as two possible explanations. Supposedly unmarried men are more likely to be out of work.

If you’re interested in this topic, Nicholas Eberstadt has a new book called [Men Without Work](https://www.aei.org/publication/men-without-work/). The focus is on a new class of men who are neither (1) employed nor (2) unemployed and looking for work. Instead they voluntarily electing not to participate in the US labor force. [Similar to Ed Glaeser](http://brandondonnelly.com/post/146761830488/the-war-on-work), part of his argument is that the incentives not to work (welfare) are simply too great.

This drop in labor force participation is largely concentrated among those without a college education. The problem seems to be that we are no longer creating enough good paying jobs for the less well educated. So the way I see it is that we have two options: we figure out how to do that (again) or we focus ourselves on education and training.

Richard Florida has written a lot about elevating service and retail jobs to fill this gap. But I have never understand how that works. I think it comes down to figuring out how to better elevate people.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/who-needs-work)*