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More men in their prime working years are neither working nor looking for jobs — here’s why
CNBC
Juhohn Lee
September 21, 2024
Key Points
A growing number of men in their prime working years, ages 25 to 54, are dropping out of the workforce.
About 10.5% of that group, or roughly 6.8 million men nationwide, were neither working nor looking for employment in August 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Education is an important predictor of men’s odds of being out of the labor force.
Men have been steadily dropping out of the workforce, especially men ages 25 to 54, who are considered to be in their prime working years.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for prime age working men was 3.4% in August 2024. This number primarily includes those who are unemployed and looking for a job. But about 10.5% of men in their prime working years, or roughly 6.8 million men nationwide, are neither working nor looking for employment, compared with just 2.5% in 1954.
“The long-term decline in labor force participation by so-called prime-age men is a tremendous worry for our society, our economy, and probably our political system,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Read MoreClosures are Decimating Higher Ed. But Your Campus Needn’t Succumb
Minding the Campus
Rob Jenkins
September 23, 2024
Since March 2020, at least 64 colleges—mostly small, private liberal arts schools—have either closed or announced they will be closing, affecting almost 46,000 students.
This follows a decade that saw nearly 900 colleges shut their doors. Most of those, however, were for-profit institutions, as the Obama Administration cracked down on such schools for allegedly bilking their students, not to mention the federal government, out of financial aid funds.
This latest round of closures feels different. It primarily affects traditional not-for-profit institutions and even includes some public campuses, raising a number of questions: Why is this happening? What might be the long-term consequences? And what can at-risk colleges do to protect themselves?
The “why” has to do mostly with shrinking enrollments. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, from 2012 and 2019, college enrollment nationwide fell by more than 10 percent, due in large part to a four percent drop in the birthrate from 1990 to 2001. This demographic trend will only worsen, as the birthrate declined even more sharply following the Great Recession in 2008.
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