BI attributed the decline in the share of working men in the United States to the rise in drug addiction

The share of working-age men working in the United States has fallen from about 96% in the 1950s to 86%, which may be due to a combination of factors - from the recession to globalization and rising drug addiction rates, Business Insider (BI) writes, citing experts surveyed. and your own analysis.

The portal cites data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to which in the early 1950s, up to 96% of American men of working age between the ages of 25 and 54 worked full or part time. As of March of this year, only 86% of American men of working age were employed.

As the portal notes, this can be explained, among other things, by the crises that occurred in the United States during this period. Thus, after the recession of 1953, the share of working able-bodied men in the United States fell from 96 to 92.8%. Then a sharp decline was observed during the 2008 crisis (from 88 to 80.6%), as well as during the covid-19 pandemic (to 78%). Nevertheless, after each of the crises, the share of working men gradually recovered, but recently this trend has begun to worsen.

“In recent decades, declines in the work share have typically accompanied recessions—the share would fall and then not fully recover,” Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank economist Abigail Wozniak told BI.

She explained that even as the economy recovers, some professions are not reaching their previous levels of employment, in part because of lower salaries offered for such work. Given that men have historically dominated the workforce, they have borne the brunt of these impacts, Wozniak said.

In addition, BI writes, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count men who, for a variety of reasons, have stopped looking for work altogether, which may contribute to the lower percentage of men in the labor force. Thus, while in 1950 about 97% of working-age men had a job or were actively looking for one, as of January 2024 this figure had fallen to about 89%.

Also, compared with 1960, then only 455 thousand workers received Social Security disability benefits, while in 2022 this number was 7.6 million people, including about 1.3 million men aged 25 to 54 years old. This can partly be explained by the growth and aging of the population, but the difficult situation on the labor market also played a role, the portal points out.

“What makes people apply for disability? In many cases, it’s repeated job loss and an inability to find new work,” said MIT economist David Autor. According to him, many people who submit such an application would actually like to work, but they are simply not hired.

In addition, BI cites the increased level of addiction associated with the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States as one of the reasons for the decline in the percentage of working men. Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Eliza Gould also pointed to the rise of male prisoners who have difficulty integrating into society.

Among other reasons, the portal cites a decrease in the number of military personnel from more than 3 million in the 1970s to the current 1.5 million, an increase in the proportion of male graduate students and male householders caring for children or elderly parents.

The US opioid epidemic has been ongoing since the late 1990s, but use of such drugs has increased sharply since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2020, more than 100 million pounds of fentanyl and 150 million opioid pills have been seized in the United States, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Department of Homeland Security.

Combating the fentanyl crisis was one of the main topics of discussion at the November 2023 summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco . Following the negotiations, Biden announced China's readiness to pursue chemical companies producing precursors to this dangerous opioid. And at the end of January 2024, the United States and CHINA launched a joint working group to solve this problem.