It’s a question that’s puzzled economists for decades: why have men been increasingly missing from the United States labour market since the 1960s?
The answer — at least partly — is that more millennial men are going to college than baby boomers. And new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco shows that as these younger men graduate, they’ll increasingly enter the workforce and the decline in participation should slow.
The share of younger millennial men not working is about twice that of boomers at the same age, according to the report published Tuesday, but the gap closes substantially as they approach middle age. A greater share of young men today have a post-secondary degree, signalling that as they age, they’ll enter the workforce.
While men generally participate in the workforce more than women, trends for the two groups have diverged: Women are surging into jobs while for men aged 25 to 54 years old, participation’s fallen more than eight percentage points in the past six decades.
“As these younger generations age and make up more of the prime-age population, this may” increase participation rates and help economic growth, researchers including Leila Bengali, Evgeniya Duzhak and Cindy Zhao wrote in the report.
Laura Curtis, Bloomberg
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