Fact check: Are American men dropping out of workforce at record rates?
In his presidential campaign kickoff speech, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., offered a generally optimistic pitch for his candidacy and for America’s future. But he also spotlighted an ominous statistic about men’s engagement in the workforce.
"Millions and millions of people have dropped out of the workforce entirely, and the share of working-age men choosing to work is the lowest it has ever been," Scott said May 22 in North Charleston, South Carolina.
Scott has a point that men’s participation in the workforce has been declining for decades. However, for the specific group of men he singled out — working-age men, defined by federal statistics as ages 25 to 54 — labor force participation has been rising since the worst of the pandemic in 2020 and is now near 2019 levels.
The long-term trend
Here’s the part Scott gets right: Over the longer term, the data shows a consistent decline in the share of men in the workforce.
The standard measurement used by the federal government is called "labor force participation rate." It’s calculated by taking the number of people working, adding the number of people actively looking for work, and then dividing the sum of those two numbers by the civilian, "noninstitutionalized" population. (This figure leaves out people who are incarcerated, in mental hospitals and in nursing homes.)
For the population overall, labor force participation has ranged from 60% to 70% since the end of World War II, rising during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, then falling since.
But the overall trend line obscures the wildly divergent trends in labor force participation among men and women.
Men’s labor force participation has declined steadily, from about 87% in 1948 to about 68% today. This long-term decline in labor force participation among men has held across race and ethnicity.
But this has been balanced out by a big increase in women joining the labor force, rising from about one-third in 1948 to more than 56% today.
Scott’s campaign pointed us to a Wall Street Journal podcast last August in which Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called the decline in men’s employment a serious national problem.
Eberstadt cited data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. He said that men out of the labor force "basically don't do civil society. They don't do worship. They don't do charity. They don't do volunteering work. Although they've got, you'd think, almost nothing but time on their hands, they don't do much help around the house with other people or housework. They don't get out of the house that much, they say. What they say they do is to watch screens."
Economists and social scientists have suggested a variety of reasons for this pattern, including:
- A decline of the U.S. manufacturing sector, which had a heavily male base of employees;
- Increased rates of addiction and mental and physical health challenges among men;
- Higher levels of formerly incarcerated people who may have trouble finding jobs;
- Changing gender roles that allow men to care for children; and
- A decline in marriage.
But one other factor is relevant for evaluating Scott’s statement: Age.
The standard measurement does not cap the age of the people it counts. However, alternate measures exist — and their trend lines are a bit less discouraging to economists.
When Scott talks about "working-age men," the best statistical fit is the labor force participation rate for people between the ages of 25 and 54, which is a standard federal definition the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses. Using this statistic helps minimize the impact of the sizable — and in recent years, increasingly retiring — members of the baby boom generation. Baby boomers are now ages 59 to 77.
While labor force participation rates for working age men have been declining since the end of World War II — from about 97% to about 87% today — that’s about half as large as the decline for all adult men.
Perhaps more important for evaluating Scott’s statement, labor force participation rates for working-age men have actually been rising for the past three years and are now close to matching their level in the pre-pandemic era of January 2019.
This undercuts the notion that "the share of working-age men choosing to work is the lowest it has ever been." Except for a dip during the pandemic, when the rate briefly fell as low as 79.9%, the rate for working-age men has barely budged since 2011, usually ranging between 88% and 89%.
Scott’s staff cited articles about the long-term decline in men’s participation in the labor force from the Brookings Institution and the New York Post, but they are from 2016 and 2022, respectively, and do not take into account the full impact of the most recent data.
"We're pretty much back to pre-pandemic peaks," said Dean Baker, co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research.
PolitiFact ruling
Scott said, "The share of working-age men choosing to work is the lowest it has ever been."
Overall, men’s participation in the labor force has fallen consistently since the end of World War II. Among "working-age men" specifically (ages 25 to 54), there has been a decline, but it’s less sharp.
The participation rate for working-age men has been rising fairly consistently since the worst of the pandemic in 2020. And except for the pandemic period, the rate for working-age men has been largely steady for the past dozen years.
The statement is partially accurate but needs additional context, so we rate it Half True.
PolitiFact intern Sevana Wenn contributed to this report.
