Just in case you weren't aware, we have a serious man crisis in our country right now because dudes are largely disenfranchised and disenchanted with the American life.
How bad is it?
This is dire.
The share of American men in the labor force reached a record low in March, fueled by baby-boomer retirees and young men who are dropping out to study or because they are disabled or sick. (The only time it has been lower was during the first two months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.)
A new labor market report out Friday will show whether the trend continued in April, but Labor Department data from March showed that 1 in 3 men across the United States are not working or looking for a job.
Just think about that for a second.
A third of all men are unemployed and aren't even seeking employment in 2026. Other than when Covid first hit, these are the lowest numbers since 1948, the immediate aftermath of World War 2 when the economy reshaped to put women into a workforce previously dominated by males.
Something is seriously wrong. Multiple somethings.
The labor market has weakened since early 2025, with most job opportunities concentrated in areas typically dominated by women, including health care and private education. At the same time, several male-dominated industries, including manufacturing, transportation and mining have shed jobs, leaving a mismatch between typical skill sets and job opportunities for men.
'It's not all retirement and education. … There are guys just dropping off the planet. They're not looking after their kids. They're not in school. They're not in the labor force,' said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan. 'Across the board when we look at men, we see challenges that they face that leave too many men disconnected.'
But I was told we needed infinite immigrants and H-1Bs because we have a severe worker shortage in the United States!
The downward turn in 2026 deepens a decades-long slide for men's participation in the workforce. Among men 16 years and older, 67 percent were working or looking for a job in March, down from 73.6 percent two decades earlier.
Some of this is caused by the Boomers retiring, according to analysts who talked to WaPo, and some of it is due to young men who are still in college.
But the drop has been continuous for nearly two decades.
'It's much more than a dollars-and-cents issue. Work is a service to others that helps to complete you,' said Nicholas Eberstadt, the conservative author of 'Men Without Work.' 'When you're disconnected from work, when you are disconnected from a family, when you're disconnected from faith, when you're disconnected from your community, people tend to suffer.'
The share of men without college degrees who are not in the labor force has edged up over the past few years, the Post analysis showed.
Can you say "civilizational disaster"?
Blue collar workers are being hit hardest, but they aren't alone as we've discussed before.
It is getting worse.
Over the next eight years, workforce participation of men ages 20 to 24 is projected to fall by 4.7 percentage points, said An Nguyen, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. That dip would be due to a shrinking youth population and job growth that is concentrated in industries typically dominated by women.
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