Incarceration Explosion Has Led To Fewer Men In Work Force

There are currently about 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 who are currently not in the labor force, meaning they do not have a job and are not actively looking for one. This number does not include men that are currently incarcerated. This number, which now has reached about 12% of that prime working age population of men, has been rising for decades. The reasons for that are varied - more women entering the work force, more students and stay-at-home dads, technological change, the loss of manufacturing jobs, etc. This trend has been occurring across most of the major industrialized countries but, for some reason, the numbers in the US have been trending higher than other countries for the last couple of decades.

Now a new book by Nicholas Eberstadt looks at why the trend in the US seems to run higher than elsewhere. And, after looking through the data, he comes up with a remarkable conclusion:

"A single variable -- having a criminal record -- is a key missing piece in explaining why work rates and LFPRs [labor-force participation rates] have collapsed much more dramatically in America than other affluent Western societies over the past two generations. This single variable also helps explain why the collapse has been so much greater for American men than women and why it has been so much more dramatic for African American men and men with low educational attainment than for other prime-age men in the United States."

Eberstadt references a study that show that as much as 12% of American men who are between the ages of 25 and 54 and are not currently incarcerated have been convicted of a felony. And these men have been released from prison without being provided any skills and into a job market that is not particularly thrilled about hiring them.

This is just another disaster that has resulted from the disastrous "war on drugs" and the "law and order" decisions over the last 30 or 40 years that essentially decided to lock people up and throwaway the key. It is a disaster for all those individuals and has now become a real drag on our economy.