Finally, a win for working men

Since the 1970s, working men, particularly those without college degrees, have experienced lower employment rates, increased social isolation and growing health risks. Today, we are starting to see early signs that this problem may be abating.

But lately, men have started going back to work.

During most recessions, the male employment rate falls and never returns to its previous level. Following the short but sharp COVID-induced recession, working-age men are defying the odds.

The multi-decade drop in male labor-force participation has been driven by both demand-side and supply-side factors. Automation and globalization have reduced the need for workers whose jobs primarily involve repetitive manual tasks, especially in male-dominated industries like manufacturing.

Supply-side factors contributed to this downward trend, too. Many of the men who dropped out of the labor force wound up on federal disability programs that effectively subsidize non-work among those who could be working with proper re-skilling and support. The opioid crisis serves as both cause and effect in male non-work, with nearly half of prime-age men not in the labor force taking pain medication daily.

The current outlook is much brighter. Since 2021, the prime-age male employment rate has increased by 2 percentage points, attaining its highest level since the global financial crisis. The improvement is not limited just to White men, as the participation rate for non-white male workers is higher today than at any point in the past three decades.

Several factors are responsible for this uptick. The Federal Reserve’s “zero interest rate” policy, along with the generous COVID-19 stimulus packages from Congress, increased the demand for workers with lower skill levels, creating opportunities for men to reenter the post-COVID workforce. Tighter qualifying criteria, stricter monitoring of disability claims, as well as shifts away from disability and toward Social Security and other retirement benefits have all helped reduce disability dependence.

The problem, however, has not been completely solved. While the growth of male labor-force participation rate has been faster in the U.S. than in other OECD countries, there is still a lag behind Germany, France and Britain in terms of the absolute percentage of prime-age men in the workforce. Their continued success suggests that they can offer useful lessons for America.

In the early-2000s, Germany implemented the Hartz reforms, which increased the efficiency of matching job seekers and vacancies. France, on the other hand, employs a Recognition of Prior Learning strategy, utilizing informal learning, in which workers gain qualifications based on prior work experience or outside formal education settings. This helps workers upskill and reskill faster without need of extensive, costly and often redundant retraining, speeding up the return to work after layoffs and recessions.

France has also moved toward “modular qualifications,” which allow workers to earn partial qualifications in specific skills. These credentials can be built upon or “stacked” to grow qualifications, which is especially important for those who need to reenter the workforce quickly or who want to upgrade their skills incrementally.

Work outcomes for European men show we still have some distance to go in creating a labor force that is more open to male workers. Diversifying the number and types of labor market training and employment approaches — apprenticeships, technical training and flexible job-based training — are key to making good jobs available to economically disengaged, prime-age workers. Encouraging men with the interest and ability to pursue four-year degrees also remains important because those degrees have been shown to deliver higher levels of income and social well-being and have community-level economic development effects that help drive growth. This is an all-of-the-above workforce agenda.

Improvements in male employment rates show the U.S. economy is not doomed to fail working-class men. These discouraged workers will respond to a robust and growing economy and to policies that encourage and support them in reentering the workforce. We owe it to them and to ourselves to make this reality available to those who are still on the margins of our economy.

Brent Orrell is a resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. He served as the acting assistant secretary for the Employment and Training Administration under President George W. Bush.