Study ties men’s labor-force drop to childhood job conditions

A new National Bureau of Economic Research paper argues that the long slide in U.S. male labor-force participation may begin well before men enter the job market. University of Connecticut economists Remy Levin and Daniela Vidart say boys who grow up around men facing poor wages and joblessness can develop weaker expectations about the payoff from work later in life.

The question has gained urgency as fewer men remain attached to the labor market. Labor Department data show that 69.5% of men age 20 and older were either working or looking for work in May, down from 76% in May 2006.

The decline stretches across decades. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show male labor-force participation reached 86.4% in 1950, fell to 79.7% by 1970 and stood at 76.4% in 1990. Female participation, by contrast, rose until the 1990s, reached a high point in 2000 and has eased only modestly since then, according to the same data.

Levin and Vidart’s paper adds a belief-formation explanation to earlier accounts of why men leave the workforce. The economists argue that local labor-market conditions experienced over a man’s lifetime, especially during childhood, shape his expectations about wages and employment as an adult.

According to their research, young males exposed to high unemployment and weak earnings among nearby men become less optimistic about their own future prospects. That pessimism, the economists say, makes them less likely to join or stay in the labor force.

The paper says the effect can outlast the original economic conditions. Levin and Vidart found that the pattern remained even after men moved to another state, and that the link was stronger when boys observed outcomes among men from their own racial group.

The economists also concluded that childhood exposure accounted for nearly all of the labor-force participation patterns they studied. Their paper says men’s expectations about their own wages or employment were tied more closely to lifetime experience than to broad national indicators such as unemployment or inflation.

For policymakers, Levin and Vidart say the findings point to the importance of forming credible long-term beliefs about the value of work. They suggest that efforts to strengthen male labor-force attachment may be more effective if they reach men during their formative years.

Other researchers have offered different explanations for the decline. The San Francisco Fed said last year that men had been pulled out of the labor force by schooling and caregiving responsibilities and pushed out by disability or skills mismatches.

Earlier work also tied some male labor-force exits to specific shocks or behavior changes. Research on the Great Recession linked the loss of construction jobs after the housing bust to men leaving work, while National Bureau of Economic Research work has examined whether improved video games contributed to reduced hours among young men.

Meredith Whitney, known for predicting the financial crisis, previously told Fortune that young single men living at home and playing video games were part of what she called a crisis among American men. Separate research cited by Fortune found that after the COVID pandemic, college-educated young men reduced their annual work time by 14 hours from 2019 to 2022, compared with three fewer hours among similarly educated women.

A 2022 Boston Fed study focused on prime-age men without college degrees. Researcher Pinghui Wu found that inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for men without degrees have fallen 17% since 1980, while earnings for college-educated men have risen 20%. The study said that earnings decline raised non-college men’s likelihood of leaving the labor force by nearly half a percentage point and explained 44% of the increase in their exit rate.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.