Men Without Work
The grim truth: over six million prime-age men were neither working nor looking for work. Conventional unemployment measures ignored these labor force dropouts, but their ranks had been rising relentlessly for half a century. Eberstadt’s unflinching analysis was, in the words of The New York Times, “an unsettling portrait not just of male unemployment, but also of lives deeply alienated from civil society.”
The famed American work ethic was once near universal: men of sound mind and body took pride in contributing to their communities and families. No longer, warned Eberstadt. And now-six years and one catastrophic pandemic later-the problem has not only worsened: it has seemingly been spreading among prime-age women and workers over fifty-five.
In a brand new introduction, Eberstadt explains how the government’s response to Covid-19 inadvertently exacerbated the flight from work in America. From indiscriminate pandemic shutdowns to almost unconditional “unemployment” benefits, Americans were essentially paid not to work.
Thus today, despite the vaccine rollouts, inexplicable numbers of working age men and women are sitting on the sidelines while over 11 million jobs go unfilled. Current low rates of unemployment, touted by pundits and politicians, are grievously misleading. The truth is that fewer prime-age American men are looking for readily available work than at any previous juncture in our history. And others may be catching the “Men Without Work” virus too.
Given the devastating economic impact of the Covid calamity and the unforeseen aftershocks yet to come, this reissue of Eberstadt’s groundbreaking work is timelier than ever.
Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches and writes extensively on demographics, economic development generally, and more specifically, international security, particularly in the Korean peninsula and Asia. He also focuses on poverty and social well-being within the United States. Domestically, he focuses on poverty and social well-being.
Mr. Eberstadt is a senior adviser for the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). He has served as a consultant or adviser for various units within the US government and frequently delivers expert testimony on a wide range of topics before Congress. In addition to his other achievements, he was awarded the prestigious Bradley Prize in 2012 and gave the Irving Kristol Lecture in 2020. Mr. Eberstadt earned his PhD, MPA, and AB from Harvard University and an MSc from the London School of Economics. He and his wife, Mary Eberstadt, have four children.
Like Men Without Work, his previous book, Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic (Templeton Press, 2012), was a best seller.