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Last week, Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman talked about the “vibecession”, asking why Americans feel bad if the economic data are good. This week, they went a little deeper, and asked why men, in particular, are struggling.

Krugman set the scene:

[It’s] really clear that something has gone wrong for the economic role of men in America . . . If you go back 60 years, men in their prime years, 25 to 54, essentially all of them were in the workforce. They were either employed or actively looking for jobs, 97.5 per cent. For all men in that age range now, that number is now under 90 per cent.

Yep (zoomable version).

Why has this happened? Part of the answer is in the measure Krugman cites. Labour force participation measures the number of people either working or looking for work. So fewer prime-age men are doing one or both of those things.

The number of men (of all ages) who want a job but can’t get one has been fairly steady (albeit with seasonal spikes, and it isn’t adjusted for population growth). That could suggest disillusionment with the job market, or perhaps a shift towards non-traditional types of work (zoomable version).

If we look at female labour participation over the same period, however, the picture becomes a little clearer (zoomable version).

In other words, labour force participation has been reasonably steady for the best part of 30 years, but the relative importance of men in the workforce has dropped. 

What’s behind this change? Globalisation? The death of traditional industry? Female emancipation? The internet? Sort of. But Wolf argues that a rather simpler reason could also be a driver:

The most obvious advantage in a labour force that men have is that they’re physically stronger. And we tend to forget, I remember this in my childhood, hundred years ago, how many jobs required a huge physical effort. And those jobs have basically disappeared, and that’s, among other things, linked to the shift from industry, manufacturing, building construction, to services. We have a completely different sort of economy.

Then there are, of course, social changes, ideological changes, about equal roles of men and women. If you add that together, it is both an economic and a social revolution.

Put all that together, add the fact that women going to university increasingly outnumber men, and the future of America’s working men looks somewhat bleak, at least in comparative terms. And not just in America.

To hear Martin and Paul’s full conversation — including their thoughts on the global political impact of dislocated men, why the US economy is bending “female-coded”, and what the solutions to the loss of “male” jobs may be — you can either head to The Economics Show site over at MainFT, or check out its feed on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or whatever your fave podcast app is. You can also read the transcript here.

Oh and one more thing. In the final episode of the series — a couple of weeks from now — Wolf and Krugman will be answering listener questions. So if you have any burning mysteries you want addressed, put them in the comments below.