BLS: Men who do not work during their prime years: What do the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth data reveal?
The labor force participation rate of prime-working-age men (ages 25 to 54) has been mostly falling since the late 1960s, with steeper declines during recessionary periods. In 1969, the labor force participation rate of men ages 25 to 54 was 96 percent, and in 2015, the rate was under 89 percent.1 Prime-age men who were out of the labor force in a given month increasingly reported they did not work in the previous year.2 Time spent not working has implications for future job and earnings potential, as well as for the well-being of the individual and his family.
This Beyond the Numbers article examines nonworking status across two generations of men. It evaluates whether men’s prior work history as well as education, family structure, personal health, incarceration status, and living situations differ between nonworkers across the two cohorts and between nonworkers and their working peers within cohorts. The article uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). The first cohort was made up of men from the NLSY79 who were born in the years 1960 to 1964, and the second cohort was formed from men in the NLSY97 who were born in the years 1980 to 1984. This divided the participants into two cohorts of men that were born 20 years apart and who were ages 30 to 36 at the time of their interviews in 1996 (NLSY79) and in 2015–16 (NLSY97). This article defines nonworkers as those men who did not work in the year prior to the 1996 or 2015–16 interview.3
A number of recent papers by economists document and try to explain the decline in labor force participation of prime-age men over time. Alan Krueger found that health conditions, disability, and the rise of opioid prescriptions may be important contributing factors.4 John Coglianese suggested that much of the decline in prime-age men’s labor force participation is due to the increase in men who temporarily leave the labor force. He credited this phenomenon to the rise in men living with parents and to a wealth effect for married/cohabiting men due to the increase in female earnings over time.5 Some economists have suggested that trade and automation are the most responsible for the decline over the last twenty years or so, with increased participation in disability insurance programs, the real value of the minimum wage, and the rise in incarceration and the growth in the number of people with prison records also having an impact.6 Jay Stewart found that a small fraction of men accounted for the majority of years that men spent not working during 1987 to 1997. He found that a substantial proportion of nonworkers lived with family members and received financial support from them.7
