President Trump wants to get America’s vast army of “dropout” men back into the workforce. Attention to this problem is long overdue.
Nearly 7 million men in the prime of life — over a tenth of the 25-to-54 age group — are neither working nor looking for work these days.
But Team Trump is trying to fix the problem with the wrong tools.
They argue that trade policy (tariffs) and industrial policy (special treatment for manufacturing) will reverse the long-term flight from work by men, by creating high-paying jobs to lure them back to work.
This approach may sound sensible to some. Unfortunately, it is likely to fail — even though the White House could succeed through other pro-work policies.
Once upon a time in America, working-age men without jobs were unemployed laborers.
Nearly 7 million men in the prime of life — over a tenth of the 25-to-54 age group — are neither working nor looking for work these days.Johnny Joo / Barcroft Media
But that’s ancient history: Today, for every “prime age” man who is actually unemployed — out of a job but looking — there are three who are neither working nor looking for work.
That means the overwhelming majority of jobless men nowadays are NILFs (for “not in labor force”). And unemployed men differ fundamentally in both mindset and behavior from NILF men.
The former consider themselves part of the labor force; the latter do not.
The former generally respond to labor market incentives; the latter generally do not.
Thus, while unemployed men tend to be out of work for just a few weeks, NILF men tend to be long-termers — often lifers.
Furthermore, only a tiny minority of NILF men say they are jobless because they could not find work. Even during recessions, most give other reasons.
Incentivizing helplessness
Millions of NILF men live work-free existences financed by an array of disability programs and their associated “poverty” benefits.
This disability archipelago incentivizes helplessness, and at a terrible cost in human potential.
America’s disability system is so dysfunctional that no one in DC can tell you just how many people are currently getting benefits from its crazy-quilt of subcomponents (SSDI, SSI, Social Security, veterans’ benefits, state-level disability programs, worker’s comp programs — and more).
Before the pandemic, however, I estimated that over half of America’s prime-age NILF men were getting benefits from one or more of these programs — and that over two-thirds lived in homes taking in at least one disability benefit.
‘Disability’ programs
That would have been over 3 million direct recipients and over 4 million indirect beneficiaries, of roughly 7 million NILF men ages 25 to 54.
The Social Security Administration’s disability programs, SSDI and SSI, are the one part of the greater disability archipelago we know the most about. According to their numbers, working-age beneficiaries on the disability rolls grew sevenfold from 1965 to 2023.
….. It is a critical error to treat the NILF problem as an unemployment question. It will not be solved by more jobs or better workplace opportunities, the way unemployment would.
Six decades of rising dropout rates for prime-age American men attests to this.
Unlike the unemployment rate, which follows the business cycle, the prime male NILF rate has risen with eerie regularity through boom and bust alike for decades — almost wholly unaffected by national economic conditions.
Remember 2022? After the COVID pandemic, America was in the midst of an unprecedented peacetime labor shortage.
Yet with nearly 12 million positions open, and employers almost begging for applicants, NILF rates for prime-age men barely budged.
Millions of those unfilled jobs during the “Great Resignation” did not require high school diplomas, only the “skills” of showing up at work, on time and sober.
But the NILF men did not come — even though close to half had at least some college.
Consider, too: Back in 2022, about 800,000 of those unfilled slots were in manufacturing.
If idle dropout men did not flock to available factory jobs then, why should we expect them to be lured to future factories built under tariff threats?
The miracle of the market does not cure social pathologies. All too many male workforce dropouts are detached (from society), dependent (on government benefits and pain meds), and defeated.
These men will not be tempted to rejoin the workforce by good paychecks alone.
We need other approaches.
Try ‘shock therapy’
Instead of continuing to pin hopes on obviously ineffective labor market “pull,” how about instead trying “shock therapy push”?
Back in the 1990s, a “welfare reform” worthy of the name brought millions of single mothers back into the workforce, a win-win for their families and for society.
Why not try the same now for our NILF men?
A disability system overhaul that protects the truly needy while promoting a work-first principle might do wonders for America — not least for a great many dispirited men on the couch.
Washington manifestly lacks the will to reform a long-broken disability system.
So why not let Elon Musk try to DOGE it?
Reclaiming our dropout men will require other measures, too. But fixing disability will be a big step in the right direction.
Very much related:
Democrats Deploy Disability Dodge. “Dozens of administrative law judges grant disability payments to almost everyone who appears before them, overriding Social Security staff who determined the people were not entitled to payments.”
